ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A pair of researchers released a new report about instances of bull sharks traveling more than 1,100 miles up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Louis area.
Paleontologist Dr. Ryan Shell, a researcher at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and his colleague Nick Gardner, a librarian at WVU Potomac State University, weeded through a number of possible hoaxes and false reports to find two real instances of sharks spotted in the area. You can read the full report, below:
The earliest came in 1937 in Alton, Illinois when two fishermen caught a five-foot bull shark. The second they say happened in 1995 when a bull shark was caught in a grate at the Rush Island power plant just south of Festus, Missouri.
There is photo evidence of both sightings, they say, but they still want to know more.
"Key areas for consideration should include to what extent physical barriers (such as locks) play a role in limiting bull shark upstream movement and what motivates or fails to motivate bull shark movement," the research states. "How habitats, prey species, and species potentially competitive with bull sharks interact with this shark far upstream."
The bull shark is well-known for its ability to travel between freshwater and saltwater habitats and has been found in rivers of five different continents.
These researchers offered three possible explanations for how/why the sharks were found in the St. Louis area:
• It may be part of the shark's evolutionary process to now explore rivers and it appears to only have begun in the last 1 million years.
• The least likely explanation, they say, is that these are just random chance incidents with no rhyme or reason.
• It may be something the sharks have doing for a long, long time and have become experts of staying undetected in the murky waters.
"Our research has left us with more questions than answers," Gardner said in a press release. "So our hope is to start a dialogue around bull shark behavior and encourage others to join us in exploring the problem."
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