Scientists at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology have tagged an oceanic whitetip shark for the first time.
University of Hawaiʻi researcher Kim Holland has long been at the forefront of developing the technology behind tagging tiger sharks, and the whitetip shark represents a foray into an exciting side of marine life that has been long sought after by UH researchers.
HPR spoke with Holland to learn more about this latest breakthrough.
“We'd always had them in our sights, so to speak, as something we wanted to tag and learn more about,” he told HPR.
Being able to track an oceanic whitetip shark's movement represents significant progress towards not only learning more about the shark species, but preserving them as well.
“One of the things about oceanic whitetips is that they're classified as critically endangered,” Holland explained.
“So the more we understand the movement patterns of these animals, the better we are in the position to conserve them.”
More information about the first satellite-linked tag of an oceanic whitetip shark, as well as information about the body of knowledge that has been gathered through shark tagging, can be found on the Pacific Island Ocean Observing System website, or PacIOOS.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 5, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
