Florida-based researchers have tracked tiger sharks tagged in Bermudian waters travelling more than 40,000 kilometres in a recent research paper.

Choy Aming, who co-authored the paper along with the late Neil Burnie and several international researchers, said the research could play an important role in conservation of the species as it charted the annual migration of the male of the species.

“The cool thing is that [co-authors] Mahmood Shivji and Guy Harvey have said it started here in Bermuda with our shark tagging programme,” Mr Aming said. “It all started when myself and Neil [Burnie] had the idea to tag the sharks in 2009.”

The paper, published in the June 9 edition of ‘Scientific Reports’, was the result of a collaboration with the Bermuda Shark Project and the Nova Southeastern University’s Guy Harvey Research Institute.

While past tagging efforts have been limited because of tag or logistical limitations, the tags used in this project managed to remain functional and attached for more than three years in some cases, sending tracking data to a satellite every time the sharks surfaced.

Twenty-four tiger sharks were tagged off the outer banks and tracked, with the vast majority of the animals tagged being male.

“That’s what we get here,” Mr Ming explained. “What we found out is that there aren’t really any Bermudian tiger sharks. They really do migrate, and we get the males and very few females.”

The tracking results showed that the male tiger sharks usually spend their winters in the Northern Caribbean, journeying to the North Atlantic during the summer months before returning to the north for the winter.

He said the results appeared to mesh with anecdotal reports from areas of the Caribbean, where they reported female sharks but few males.

One tiger shark, named Harry Lindo after a sponsor, was recorded travelling more than 44,000km (27,000 miles) over more than three years — the largest distance ever documented for a tiger shark and possibly for any shark. Mr Aming said that Harry was also notable because of his consistency.

“He would hang out in the same section of the Virgin Islands and every one of the three years he would leave the same week to go on his migration and return on the same week,” Mr Aming said. “He would always leave within the same three to four day period every year.”

While the majority of tagged sharks followed the same migrational pattern, a few of the smaller sharks did appear to stay near Bermuda. Of those, two spent the first winter near Bermuda but began migrating later.

Asked if this could indicate that Bermuda was being used as a “nursery”, Mr Aming said it was a possibility.

“We have seen a couple of very small sharks,” he said. “The smallest sharks that we tagged were around 6ft from their nose to the fork of their tale, while the average is closer to 10ft.”

He said the results of the study could greatly benefit conservation efforts as it shows that, due to the species’ migration, policies in one jurisdiction can directly impact shark populations in others.

• To see the direct tracking records of the Bermuda-tagged tiger sharks, visit: www.nova.edu/ocean/ghri/tracking/