PET OF THE WEEK An adorable phantom to haunt you

By The Bahamas Humane Society

Phantom loves his dog walks! And despite his name, he’s not spooky at all. This lovely fellow is currently the shelter’s longest resident, having arrived back in 2021.

Phantom will need to be a single dog in his new home as he’s not too tolerant of other dogs, or cats, for that matter, but he enjoys being around humans, even children.

Have you been looking for a loving canine companion?

Phantom might just ghost his way into your heart. Come to the BHS to meet him or call 323-5138 for more information. Phantom looks forward to meeting you!

• The dog walks happen Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10am. If you’d like to join in, please contact the group through the Facebook page ‘Animal Lovers Nassau’.

and weighing 1,264 pounds. Maple is considered to be a sub-adult. She is roughly in the same place as Ironbound and last “pinged” at 9.54pm on April 11; just eight minutes after he did.

I wonder if they were feeding off something that made them come up to the surface briefly. In order for them to ping, the tracker attached to the dorsal fin has to be out of the water for approximately 30 seconds to get a good and definite location.

It is interesting that both MSN news and the Sun tabloid are sensationally reporting erroneous information about Ironbound, saying that he “pinged” off Andros (Mangrove Cay) at the Little Bahama Bank.

Well, we all know the Little Bahama Bank where Ironbound “pinged” is a good distance is away from Man- grove Cay, Andros and is actually near Grand Bahama.

Great whites are most certainly not a regular sight in Bahamian waters, but now we know that they do come and go, sometimes observed by fishermen or divers who report seeing them and everybody tells them that they must have been mistaken… and they most probably were not.

OCEARCH has a bunch of different sharks tagged, not just the great white sharks and their website is simply fascination. All you have to do is type in the word ‘OCEARCH’ and Google will lead you to their website.

In October 2020, OCEARCH had a theory that perhaps Unama’ki, a large 15-foot female weighing 2,076-pound shark who pinged just north of Abaco, was looking for calmer waters to give birth. Her trip to Bahamian waters mirrored trips made by two other female great whites, Luna and Lydia, perhaps all in the family way.

The thing to remember is that only a small number of sharks are tagged, and then in order to be located anywhere, they have to break water and keep the tracker out of water for a period of 30 seconds; not all animals are cooperative.

The truth of the matter is that we really do not know what is swimming 100 yards away from us. There are people who honestly believe that big fish do not swim close to beaches, I have watched a very large hammerhead shark almost beach itself chasing a ray, but that is another article.

No, great white sharks are not regular visitors and sightings are unusual, but by no means impossible.

Presently, we have to count on the approximately 500 sharks tagged to give us an indication of where they travel and why.

There has been recent cause to actually believe that the great white is not quite as solitary as we think, just as Ironbound and Maple have proven to us on the Little Bahama Bank. Their presence should not inspire panic but rather intriguing.

Is OCEARCH correct that the females who head this way are coming to give birth? If so, where do the babies go? Are we home to a nursery?

So many fascinating unanswered questions! Research is what is needed, and the Bahamas is becoming more and more aware of our unique position in the field of marine observation.