A fisherman in Bass Harbor called Allied Whale at College of the Atlantic last September to report a thresher shark in his possession as the result of bycatch. A necropsy on the shark, which had been kept in the freezer at the college for the last eight months, was performed at the COA campus on Friday, May 6.
Allied Whale, a marine mammal laboratory, wasn’t interested in the shark since it was out of its scope of study but helped to collect it and turn it over to COA student Tess Moore.
Moore, a third-year student and employee at the Dorr Museum of Natural History, spent spring term designing an independent study aimed at extracting the most scientific and educational value from the shark. Moore contacted the Department of Marine Resources for assistance and support, made plans to include students at the nearby Community School and contacted laboratories across the country that would also be interested in receiving samples of the shark for further study.
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