Atlantic Shark Institute | 2025 Report

What a truly spectacular year we have had and we couldn’t have done nearly as much without everyone’s support! As you will read, 2025 was our best year to date for all of our research initiatives.

First, we want to thank the more than 10,000 Rhode Island residents who have supported our research through the purchase of the ASI charity license plate. We have sold more plates than any charity in the history of Rhode Island and sales continue to grow.

Thank you all so much for the support and keep reading to learn how that support has helped us immensely! We also want to note that we couldn’t have done this work without all the support from our Research Advisory Board to make sure we were making the right decisions, our partnerships with RI DEM Marine Fisheries, Mystic Aquarium, Roger Williams University, Block Island Maritime Institute and our Major Donors who helped fund a good portion of this work. We also need to acknowledge our Research Volunteers (boat owners) who got us to the places we needed to get to. You all make for an invaluable team and each one of you plays a critical role in our success. So, thank you again on behalf of everyone at the ASI.

Researchers from the Atlantic Shark Institute head back to land after a successful day of shark research.

With that as backdrop, here is a birds-eye view of some of the highlights of 2025:

• For the first time, we were able to provide grants to PhD students to work with the ASI on projects that we approved after considerable interest from countless students nationwide. The three students selected each have a project that has considerable research value as it relates to shark health and ocean health. The ASI supports these students with all of our resources and, in return, the ASI will be co authors on their published work.

  
  

• Through the generosity of donors we were able to expand our acoustic receiver array (Shark Array) in RI waters once again. This year we were able to increase our array to 20 receivers, which were critical to our research! We got hundreds of thousands of detections (a lot were the same exact fish!) and the data is invaluable. Sharks, tuna, striped bass, and many other species visited our array, including several threatened or endangered species such as Atlantic sturgeon and sea turtles. The data were critically important for the ASI, RI DEM and dozens of other researchers that are also benefiting from this information. This data will become a foundational element for RI waters and our surrounding area for decades to come.

An Atlantic Shark Institute receiver off of Block Island.

• The most exciting data to come from the Shark Array and what has been getting the most attention is white sharks. We’ve detected dozens of white sharks and, as has been the case in years past, we are detecting white sharks that we have tagged previously. With each passing season we are getting more data on how these sharks move around RI, how long they stay, and where they head next. We are also about to publish the very first paper on white sharks in Rhode Island waters!

  
  

• This past summer we hit a major milestone by tagging our 50th white shark! It became national news based on all we are learning about these young and vulnerable sharks. Tags deployed consisted of satellite tags allowing us to track location, water depth and water temperature, as well as acoustic tags which allow us to track these sharks for up to 10 years and through multiple migration cycles along the east coast.

Chasing Fins aired on WSBE / PBS Rhode Island (now known as Ocean State Media) in August 2025.

• The ASI was the focus of a PBS special, Chasing Fins! Created by award-winning producer and director Tomas Koeck, the film showcased the ASI’s research, partners, methods and more to a wide audience. The short film was widely celebrated and got wonderful reviews that included both the quality of the work done by Tomas and the value of our research work.

• Our collaboration with the RI Department of Environmental Management and the coastal shark tagging study also had tremendous success. The study is focused on thresher and blue sharks. Both sharks are considered to be recreationally significant to RI and the study focuses on movement ecology, seasonal migration patterns, their use of state waters, habitats they frequent and more. The value of what we are learning grows significantly each year.

• Research Volunteers are boat owners who agree to take researchers out, when needed, at no cost to the researchers. This has proven to be invaluable with the significant cost charged by charter captains and the limited budgets that researchers have. We grew the list of Research Volunteers to 18 this season. A sizable number that allows for even more research to get completed. We also have a wonderful team of charter captains and commercial fishermen that round out the fleet. This is a great program and we couldn’t do all this work without the support of these boat owners.

Commercial fishermen who affiliate themselves with the ASI are crucial to collecting important data related to research studies.

• In 2025, we were able to deploy and continue to refine our BRUVs (Baited Remote Underwater Video System) research. This research is taking place off Block Island, RI and in the areas of the Southwest Ledge and the Southern coast. It involves baiting and lowering our BRUVs to the sea floor to get high-definition video of everything that comes to visit. This season we refined the design of the BRUVs (yet again) and we all love it. In fact, we are going to have three more BRUVs made as we expand our collaboration with Roger Williams University here in RI.

  
  

• We also have two new visitors to our area that have garnered our attention and that of our Research Advisory Board. Spinner and Blacktip sharks usually spend their time in warmer waters and are more associated with Florida than southern New England. Their arrival is most likely associated with warming ocean temperatures and creates an opportunity to investigate many aspects of their presence. Our research collaboration on these studies include the Smithsonian, Florida Atlantic University, Florida State University and others. Our goal is to answer pressing questions on both species over the next few

  research seasons. We have tagged approximately 20 sharks for this research and we are excited about what we will learn.

Jake Beretta, a student at Florida State University, tags a spinner shark.

• Our profile on social media, general media, TV and radio increased dramatically in 2025. We did several TV interviews throughout the year, appeared in countless articles, and could be found in places like NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, Fortune, CNN, National Geographic, US News and World Report, AP, USA Today and many more. In addition, our followers on Facebook and Instagram increased from a little over 2,000 at the start of 2020 to over 90,000 today!

• Sales of Atlantic Shark Institute gear increased more than 100% from last year as well. That includes sweatshirts, t-shirts, fishing shirts, hats and more.

  There’s more going on, and several layers of additional detail on these and other projects we are focused on.

We’ve truly had a very successful year and we appreciate everyone’s efforts to make that happen. We have an exciting 2026 planned with some great things on the horizon!

Thanks again and here’s looking forward to 2026!

Best,

Jon Dodd

Executive Director

Atlantic Shark Institute

“Shark Health is Ocean Health, and Ocean Health is Our Health” TM