Arctic Challenge for Sustainability Project

ArCS Blog

Ecological studies of Greenland sharks

I visited the Tremblay Sound in the Canadian Arctic in the last August to study the ecology of Greenland sharks. In the sound, a large project called “Ecosystem Approach in Tremblay”, led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in going on. 

As part of the project, I collaborated with Dr. Nigel Hussey from Windsor University to catch Greenland sharks, instrumented them (with electronic tags), and released them. We set a line with six hooks every day, and got 1-4 sharks every time (indicating that there are a lot of sharks in the area). However, when we got multiple sharks at a time, one or two sharks were often dead due to cannibalism. During the two-week stay at the camp, we caught and released ten sharks in total, and got the data from all individuals. I will analyze the data to understand the behavioral ecology of Greenland sharks, and try to publish the results.

Yuuki Watanabe (NIPR, a member of theme 6)


A killer whale, Narwhals