11/27/2025
Greenland Sharks!
Just who came up with the SCIENCE they can live to 200 to 500 years old? Our own VIMS Dr. Brill was a part of that brain trust. The QUICK summary is that an international group of smart people were trying to figure out how means-mechanisms-tools-sounds could get these slow moving sharks to get out of the way to avoid being by-catch in trawlers nets.
As they noodled about shark-stuff, they also wondered just how old these sharks cold be (mind you, slow moving big things conserve energy n live longer). So, Dr. Brill suggested that the carbon dating of tree rings allows the sequestered inner rings to be calculated at their "birth day" since that core circle is left alone n encapsulated.
So, the same logic was applied to the Greenland shark crystalline lens (the eye lens).
They harvested the by-catch sharks v eyes n (as the lens grows like an onion, with layer after layer being added over time), they dissected to the center (baby ring), and used carbon dating to arrive at the current life span of the shark ifo them. 200 to v 500 years of age were the results from their various by-catch sharks.
Yes, all of us agree that it is sad the by-catch ended the lives of these lives, older than our country plus the marking of the Portuguese conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires, and the Protestant reformation.
Cool stuff. Thinking outside of the box, but the by-catch problem needs to be answered.
Slow-growing, but long-living species have undetermined values for human longevity. Let us not regret their extermination so we can have Cod sandwiches (or whatever the capture in their sacred, cold waters).
