We went to downtown St. Petersburg to check out the FWC Shark ID program. While we were waiting for it to start we relaxed and listened to the new Moana soundtrack.
The program began and we were all excited to see what we would learn.
We watched a 45 minute presentation on how to ID sharks and how to use a dichotomous key to help. Then we were turned loose with 25 sharks samples to ID them. Some were super hard and some were fairly simple. Since many were juvenile samples it was really hard.
Not bad we got 19/25 but a few we had almost right! We took good notes and know what to look at next time. Some of the ones we missed were because they were preserved samples or a identifying feature was missing. I think we did excellent!
This was a bonus question! We both knew the answer was Angel Shark!
This was an amazing program and really opened our eyes to how to ID sharks and how difficult it can be for the FWC officers to tell let alone fisherman!
Shark Identification Workshop with the FWC Research Institute