Can Sharks Detect Magnetic Fields? | Sharkcano

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NARRATOR: In Bimini, Bahamas, a team of experts are hoping to entice a couple sharks for an experiment and get more than they bargained for.

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They're testing if sharks can detect magnetic fields. The answer could unlock a major mystery about how sharks find far-flung, food-rich volcanic islands and whether the island's naturally magnetic lava rock is involved.

For this open water experiment, they arranged three powerful magnets to the right and three non-magnetic controls to the left. A big hammerhead glides over the aluminum control without a glance and heads for the magnets. Hammerheads ignore the aluminum, clustering around the magnets. The nurse sharks have a greater response. Nurse sharks are drawn to the magnets. The sharks are agitated, possibly by the magnets.

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That was fantastic. That was great. So many hammerheads down there, all over the place. A bunch of nurse sharks. The nurse sharks were playing at the magnets. Really neat dive all around.

Yeah, so that dive was crazy. We had nine hammerheads there. We got what seemed like countless nurse sharks. What we saw was that both the nurse sharks and the hammerheads did respond to the magnets. So what we can take away from that is that those weak magnetic fields that are locked in volcanic rock are something that the sharks could detect and may be able to use in navigation.