When hurricanes roar in, expect sharks to head out to sea, corals to shatter, and grouper and other reef fish to end up dead on shorelines.
Hurricane Milton was making its way across the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday and expected to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area on the west coast of Florida.
A big storm like Milton can be expected to churn the water 60 to 80 feet below the sea’s surface, says Mark Patterson, a professor at Northeastern’s Marine Science Center.
Some marine animals will be able to escape by going farther out to sea, he says.
The approaching megastorm may have already sent blacktip and hammerhead sharks that frequent Florida’s west coast swimming to calmer waters.
“A lot of fish do sense a disturbance like this and go to deeper water,” Patterson says.
That’s especially true for sharks, which do not have swim bladders that cause fish like snappers and groupers to maintain neutral buoyancy in water and hinder their escape, he says.
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AP Photo/Chris O’Meara
