New Hybrid Sharks Found Off Coast of Australia

A very rare occurrence has been discovered off the coast off Australia recently. During a cataloging and tagging experiment done by lead researcher Jess Morgan, it was discovered that the Australian Black Tip shark had been mating and producing viable hybrid offspring with the Common Black Tip shark. This is extremely significant since the Australian Black tip can only survive in warm water near the coast of Australia, while the hybrid species was found over 1,000 miles off the coast in much cooler waters. The new species of black tip looks much like the smaller common black tip species, but has DNA more similar to the Australian relative. While tagging sharks and taking DNA samples, Morgan and her crew found that while tagging what they thought were common black tip and Australian black tip sharks, they found that about 20% of the sharks they tagged were actually the hybrid species

[caption id="attachment_4635" align="aligncenter" width="278" caption="The Newly Discovered Hybrid Black TIp Shark"][/caption]

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This was a shock to the science world but also could answer many questions we have about sharks. Sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years however we seem to know very little about their habits and how they work. With this new discovery of hybrids allows for increased fitness and could be a reason sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Morgan and her crew feel that a trigger to this phenomena could be global warming, and fishing, which are constantly harming the sharks and their habitats. They feel that this discovery could have been triggered by these factors and could be a way for species to expand their territory and enhance there chance of survival.