354 — Thermal Imaging Reveals Changes in Body Surface Temperatures of Blacktip Sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) during Air Exposure

Previously, I wrote about how many types of ectothermic sharks rely on behavioral or water-depth changes to modulate their body temperature (308). This means that when a shark is in ambient air — perhaps during a tagging operation for #science and conservation, but also perhaps during humans being idiots — their body temperature is no longer in their control, and it begins to slide toward the ambient surrounding temperature.

This research pointed a thermal camera at sharks between the times at which they were landed and released, and monitored their skin temperature throughout the duration of exposure to air.

The sharks’ surface temperature gradually increased with exposure time, and the body surface increased in correlation with the ambient air temperature. This is important because cold shock — the shock an animal can undergo when returning from hotter air to the cool water temperature — can set in when there’s only been a few degrees of surface warming.

Stress too — both before and after landing — can affect the influence of health of the shark post-release, which means that recreational and commercial shark catches might have a much greater ecological impact than we have ways of measuring or appreciating currently.