Dr. Danny Coffey

Unique Advantages of Cold-Water Sharks

About the Speaker

Sharks have been in an evolutionary “arms race” with their prey for millions of years. Some sharks evolved unique adaptations that enable them to undertake extensive migrations to pursue prey unreachable to other predators. Even these formidable predators have physiological limitations creating barriers in an otherwise featureless open ocean, which will impact accessibility to other prey. To overcome challenges associated with direct observation of natural predator and prey behavior, the development of animal-borne electronic devices has allowed us to remotely observe the movements of sharks across diverse habitats, leading to significant breakthroughs in our understanding of their ecology and physiology. Here, we will explore how mammal-like muscles power swimming in a cold-water shark and follow an elusive “living fossil” into the deep sea. Dr. Danny Coffey is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He has over ten years of experience using animal-borne tracking technologies as research tools to monitor the movement and behavior of sharks and fishes across different spatial and temporal scales. This information is used to investigate the underlying ecological and physiological drivers of habitat use that are informative for managing and conserving living marine resources.