Researcher Mark Meekan diving with a whale shark (Wayne Osborn)
Nuke isotopes reveal whale sharks’ age
Growth rings in whale-shark vertebrae have shown specimens to be up to 50 years old at the time of death — implying that some whale sharks could live for more than 100 years, and perhaps up to 150 years. Researchers have found spikes in carbon-14 concentrations corresponding to years when above-ground thermonuclear tests peaked, at the height of the cold war. “It suggests that these things are probably intensely vulnerable to over-harvesting,” says fish biologist Mark Meekan.
BBC News | 3 min readReference: Frontiers in Marine Science paper
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