Sociable Sharks | National Geographic

for more than 40 years marine biologist
Samuel Gruber has been researching the
behavior of lemon sharks but he’s never
seen anything like this dozens of them
huddled together on the bottom here off
the coast of Jupiter Florida he’s about
to dive 80 feet below to find out why
the water is murky as Gruber gets deeper
it’s clear he’s not alone a school of
more than three dozen adult lemon sharks
ready and waiting summer as long as ten
feet an awesome sight but it doesn’t
stop Gruber from getting close enough to
touch them what are so many sharks doing
in the same place at the same time he
believes the Predators are displaying
what he calls refuge een behavior
they’re out and about when the sun goes
down there out feeding moving around and
when the Sun comes up they begin to go
to this particular place where they can
assemble and rest on the bottom now
resting on this bottom gives them a
little bit of an energetic edge in the
sense that they can face up into the
current and they don’t have to swim
but there may be more to it than resting
lemon sharks are social animals and
sometimes school in small groups this
might also be a sort of mating game the
females are assembling here in order to
attract males that’s what I think is
going on here and the way it works I
think is that early in december a group
of females who know to come here because
they’ve done it year after year will
assemble at this Gruber suspects female
lemon sharks have chosen this reef as a
place for producing chemical signals
called pheromones the pheromones are
carried by the currents and they attract
potential male suitors and then it’s on
to the domestic phase when this group
reaches a critical mass say around March
or februari March they begin to move out
and they move into the lagoon from
mating and and birthing which takes
place in April’s
and if Gruber’s hunch is right he can
expect another miracle soon when these
creatures bring a new generation of
lemon sharks into the ocean