This video shows how shark expert Ramón Bonfil fits motion-
tracking satellite tags onto great white sharksby hand. Read
more about it below the video player.
July 21, 2005For three years Ramón Bonfil, a conservation scientist and shark specialist with the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society, has been hand-fitting South Africa's great whites with dorsal-fin satellite tags. The tags reveal the sharks' day-to-day and long-term movements.
Bonfil's capture techniqueseen in this videoincludes a heart-pumping face-to-face meeting with the king of the ocean food chain.
"It's a potentially dangerous situation, but we try to minimize the risk for both the scientists and the sharks," Bonfil said. "We don't want to kill a shark by mistake while studying it. Accidents can happen, so we're careful to work on nice flat water without risking more than we should."