A popular film series, “Sharknado”, depicts the fictional occurrence of large schools of sharks being gathered by sea-forming tornadoes, known as waterspouts. When these phenomena move over land, the sharks wreak havoc among the population. While it seems absurd, research from the Dakota Bureau of Meteorology and the Minnesota University, suggests that sharknadoes could happen.
Fish out of Water
The scientific phenomenon of flightless animals being carried and dropped by tornadoes is rare but certainly not fiction, and can be found in Roman transcripts, thousands of years old. Incidentally, there have been reports of Animal Rains all over the world, most commonly in places with high rates of tornadoes, such as the states of Dakota and Minnesota. …show more content…
“This is rare, but it could be a possibility if something attracts them to that location.”
Tracking Shark Movements
Electronic location tags have been used by biologists, conservationists, and scientific researchers for decades to track the movements and behaviour of sharks. A small device is attached to the dorsal fin of the shark which periodically sends GPS location points to a receiver.
On an expedition off the coast of Florida, Duncan Burgess, a marine biologist from Minnesota University tagged over 100 sharks. The key goal was to determine what attracts sharks to discover if the formation of a waterspout would lure sharks into the area.
“Our findings were astounding and exactly what we had hoped for,” says Burgess. “There were three main sensory excitations that we noticed the sharks following: sound, movement and light. Some species can detect vibrations caused by noise or movement from over two kilometres away, usually as an indication of wounded prey. Additionally, we discovered that sharks distinguish light tones and are attracted to bright flashes of light, one of the reasons why they are aggressive in the presence of shining metal from scuba …show more content…
The core produces a significant upwards force that acts on objects in its path. As soon as any section of an entity becomes airborne, the strong cyclonic winds lift it. Resultantly, we have noticed that it is more common for bodies with an uneven weight distribution to be elevated.”
Taking wind from old research
In the 1990s, tornadoes were studied vastly, funded by several governments residing in the USA’s “tornado alley”, the area with the highest density of tornadoes in the world. This research was aimed at understanding the tornadoes to reduce the severity. While this objective was not achieved, the information that was discovered is pivotal in researching sharknadoes.
Previous researchers identified that waterspouts draw in large amounts of water. They thought that this was linked to the lower wind speeds of waterspouts but their hypothesis was unsupported by further investigations.
However, the data showed the extreme turbulence in the water, which, along with the lighting that is present during tornadoes, satisfies all three shark lures, sound, movement, and light, as described by Duncan Burgess.
Final
Fish out of Water
The scientific phenomenon of flightless animals being carried and dropped by tornadoes is rare but certainly not fiction, and can be found in Roman transcripts, thousands of years old. Incidentally, there have been reports of Animal Rains all over the world, most commonly in places with high rates of tornadoes, such as the states of Dakota and Minnesota. …show more content…
“This is rare, but it could be a possibility if something attracts them to that location.”
Tracking Shark Movements
Electronic location tags have been used by biologists, conservationists, and scientific researchers for decades to track the movements and behaviour of sharks. A small device is attached to the dorsal fin of the shark which periodically sends GPS location points to a receiver.
On an expedition off the coast of Florida, Duncan Burgess, a marine biologist from Minnesota University tagged over 100 sharks. The key goal was to determine what attracts sharks to discover if the formation of a waterspout would lure sharks into the area.
“Our findings were astounding and exactly what we had hoped for,” says Burgess. “There were three main sensory excitations that we noticed the sharks following: sound, movement and light. Some species can detect vibrations caused by noise or movement from over two kilometres away, usually as an indication of wounded prey. Additionally, we discovered that sharks distinguish light tones and are attracted to bright flashes of light, one of the reasons why they are aggressive in the presence of shining metal from scuba …show more content…
The core produces a significant upwards force that acts on objects in its path. As soon as any section of an entity becomes airborne, the strong cyclonic winds lift it. Resultantly, we have noticed that it is more common for bodies with an uneven weight distribution to be elevated.”
Taking wind from old research
In the 1990s, tornadoes were studied vastly, funded by several governments residing in the USA’s “tornado alley”, the area with the highest density of tornadoes in the world. This research was aimed at understanding the tornadoes to reduce the severity. While this objective was not achieved, the information that was discovered is pivotal in researching sharknadoes.
Previous researchers identified that waterspouts draw in large amounts of water. They thought that this was linked to the lower wind speeds of waterspouts but their hypothesis was unsupported by further investigations.
However, the data showed the extreme turbulence in the water, which, along with the lighting that is present during tornadoes, satisfies all three shark lures, sound, movement, and light, as described by Duncan Burgess.
Final