Two UWindsor researchers never imagined their research would lead them deep underwater where they could observe Greenland sharks up close in the wild from the comfort of a submarine.

Doctoral student Eric Ste-Marie (MSc 2020), along with his supervisor, integrative biology professor Nigel Hussey, embarked on a two-week journey on a state-of-the-art boat called the OceanXplorer. Ste-Marie and Dr. Hussey benefited from having access to wet labs, dry labs, two submarines, an advanced sonar system, and a gene sequencer, among other high-tech tools, all on board.

“Honestly it was a really amazing team to work with and everyone was super supportive while we were there and leading up to it,” says Ste-Marie.

“Especially considering in 2021 it was something that would have been impossible for us to plan by ourselves — we are super grateful for being a part of that team.”

For the past seven years, Ste-Marie has studied Greenland sharks with Hussey. He’s previously attached sonar tags to sharks in the Canadian arctic; for the OceanXplorer voyage, they worked with sharks off an island called Svalbard, north of Norway.

“But this was unlike any experience I’ve had before, or ever will in the future,” he says.

“This is the most advanced research vessel on the planet right now and it has everything you could ever want or imagine in a science setting — all on one boat.”

The trip was accompanied by a production crew filming every step of the research process. The series was a collaboration with National Geographic, the BBC, and OceanX.

“We were there to do our normal Greenland shark tagging work by putting archival accelerometer tags onto Greenland sharks to study their fine scale behaviours and we were particularly interested in their feeding behaviour.”

He and Hussey both had the opportunity to take a submarine dive to watch the Greenland sharks up-close, feeding in their natural habitat.

“I felt like a kid at Disneyworld, and I was smiling ear to ear when I went down,” he says.

“To start, we’re in the most beautiful fjords in Svalbard with glaciers and mountains and to go down 200 metres to where you hit the twilight zone and then to see the species you’ve studied for years but you’ve never seen in their natural environment because they’re a deep-water species.”

Typically, the UWindsor researchers use a compact action camera to collect remote underwater video to look at feeding and behaviours. But this gives a limited view.

“With their set up we could do a much larger scale experiment and view a much wider area. We also had the ability to move the camera. So if the shark swims out of frame you can still follow it and see that behaviour progress over time.”

It is one thing to have the data collected during field work, says Ste-Marie, but it is another thing to see that ecosystem for yourself.

“And to really get a feel for the situation — it really inspires big science breakthroughs,” he says. “Both the conversations you’re having right then and the being there in the area you’re studying, it definitely helps inspire those thoughts that lead to analyses, that lead to publications, and ultimately to policy that protects the species we’re studying.”

Ste-Marie says this Norwegian quest allowed them to tag the sharks with acceleration biologging packages which also record depth, temperature, and sonar data. They can start to answer behaviour questions such as whether the slow-moving large fish are predominantly predators or scavengers.

The documentary featuring Ste-Marie and Hussey is called OceanXplorers and it is available on the streaming service Disney+. Read more about their research in this DailyNews article.