Shark record

-- a 3.8 metre-long female great white shark has completed the first documented round-trip ocean crossing by a shark.

It travelled from South Africa across the Indian Ocean to Australia -- over 11,000 kilometres (km) -- in just 99 days. The journey was monitored by a 'pop-up archival tag', which automatically releases at a pre-programmed date. Five months after the transmitter surfaced off Australia, project research scientists spotted the shark -- identifiable by notches in its dorsal fin -- off South Africa, after it completed a round trip of some 20,000 km in just nine months. It is the fastest trans-oceanic round trip recorded by any marine animal (Science, Vol 310, No 5745, October 7, 2005).