“Tagging” a big, gentle whale shark—that is, swimming close enough to attach a device that will help scientists track the animal’s movements—seems easy enough for researchers. But tagging a tiger shark, known to be aggressive and strong enough to crunch a turtle in half, shell and all? Last year, in the second edition of “Expedition Shark” of the Tubbataha Management Office (TMO) and the Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (Lamave), the first study of its kind in the country, a tiger shark was tagged for the first time in the Coral Triangle. In April this year, they did it again, fitting a tiger shark with both acoustic and satellite tags, along with nine gray reef sharks and two manta rays fitted with acoustic tags. The tags allow the sharks’ movements to be monitored by researchers, possibly even beyond Tubbataha’s borders.

Honasan, A. (2017, June 17). Why should we care about sharks?. Philippine Daily Inquirer, p. C4.