Video Shows 1,000 Blacktip Sharks Off Coast

A blacktip shark (Albert kok via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

An airplane flew over the Florida coastline and captured footage of swarms of blacktip sharks migrating south over the winter. The tiny dots clustered in the video are all sharks.

The sharks are said to be around 6 feet in length each, and they usually travel south for the winter.

And the blacktips are only several hundred feet from shore, Stephen Kajiura, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, told ABC News. Observing them migrate is normal, but the number observed at the time was unusually large.

Biologists say it’s normal for the sharks to do migrate in such a fashion.

“It’s not unusual, but it’s great to see them,” Kajiura told ABC News.

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Kajiura added to CBS 12 in Florida: “There are literally tens of thousands of sharks a stone’s throw away from our shoreline. You could throw a pebble and literally strike a shark. They are that close.”

Even though blacktip sharks are likely more scared of humans than humans are scared of them, they are still responsible for the highest number of attacks each year in Florida. Blacktips have never killed anyone, however.

“For the most part, if you look historically, we have relatively few bites on people by blacktips in this area,” added Kajiura. “These sharks are really skittish, so when you get in the water, they’re going to scatter and go away.”

Kajiura said he’s tagged 32 sharks so far with tracking devices to observe their migration patterns, and will tag a total of 60 sharks overall.

Blacktip sharks, which have been assessed as Near Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are heavily fished and are of high value for anglers.

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The blacktip shark was only four feet in length.

The predator was identified as an Atlantic goliath grouper, which can weigh as much as 790 pounds and can grow up to 8.2 feet in length.

The fishermen hooked the shark off the coast of Bonita Springs, Florida, several years ago before the grouper took over.

As Business Insider noted, goliath groupers are known to stalk and ambush divers.

The goliath grouper is the largest of the grouper species in the Atlantic Ocean, and they can weigh up to 800 pounds, according to NOAA’s website. However, there have been reports of much larger groupers.

“They were once so overfished in the southeastern United States, they were considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act,” according to NOAA.

They’re found in shallow tropical waters near coral reefs, and its range extends from the Florida Keys to the Gulf of Mexico. But it’s also found in the Bahamas, the Caribbean Sea, and off Brazil.