JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – OCEARCH, the largest shark-tagging and oceanic research organization in the world, announced Tuesday morning that it is extending its partnership with Jacksonville University.
“It solidifies our position in the marine science field,” said Dr. Quinton White, executive director emeritus of JU’s Marine Science Research Institute. “It’s provided opportunities for our students that we didn’t originally envision.”
Multi-million dollar contributions from the city of Jacksonville and the state of Florida have moved forward the potential groundbreaking for the OCEARCH Global Headquarters in Mayport.
Established in 2017, OCEARCH at Jacksonville University is an ocean-first partnership that has fostered and promoted unique opportunities for student-centric learning and meaningful scientific research.
Research like the latest expedition called “Save the Med,” which is sending a crew to study the White Shark population off the coasts of Spain, France and Ireland.
Over the past 17 years, OCEARCH has conducted 46 research expeditions, tagged more than 400 sharks and conducted studies across the globe.
“We have the ingenuity and the tenacity of OCEARCH, which can go anywhere, work on any body of water and solve any puzzle,” OCEARCH founder Chris Fischer said.
OCEARCH works to gather critical data on Great White Sharks and other keystone marine species to help better understand their ecosystems and the conservation strategies needed to protect them.
“OCEARCH is an open data source organization, as we are,” White said. “So the information that they generate is readily available to anybody on their cellphone.”
White said a decade ago we had no idea where sharks went or what they were doing.
“Now we have a very good handle on what’s happening on the western Atlantic, and we’re now looking at can we go to the eastern Atlantic and the Med and answer the same questions,” White said. “There are nine Great White Shark populations around the world. They’re just beginning to understand how they operate and what happens.”