There’s something different about seeing a shark not as an idea—but as an individual.
Not just a scalloped hammerhead out there somewhere in the Gulf, but one you can actually follow. One with a name, a track, and a story unfolding in near real time. A shark that was here yesterday—and today is somewhere else entirely.
That’s what makes what Dr. Kesley Banks is doing so compelling.
Dr. Kesley Banks, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Scientist in the Center for Sportfish Science and Conservation at the Harte Research Institute, and right now some of the most interesting shark movement data in the Gulf of Mexico is coming through a program called FinFinder.
It’s changing how people see sharks in this region-as part of a living, moving system right off our own coastline.
And it starts with sharks like Webbkinfield and Cookie.
These aren’t abstract data points. They’re two male scalloped hammerheads, both just over seven feet long, tagged off the Texas coast. What’s interesting isn’t just that they’ve been tracked, but what they’re doing after being tagged.
“He is a male scalloped hammerhead…just over seven feet, and he’s been hanging out basically right where we tagged him. He hasn’t gone too far,” Dr. Banks said.
At first, that might not sound groundbreaking. But when you begin stacking that kind of data over time, patterns start to emerge. And sometimes those patterns raise more questions than answers.
In this case, it led to one of the more surprising discoveries coming out of the Texas coast.
“We actually found out that we have only tagged male scalloped hammerheads here,” she said.
That’s not a short-term fluke. That’s ten years of tagging effort, roughly 400 anglers a year along the Texas coast, and still no females showing up in that data set. It forces researchers to rethink how these sharks are using the Gulf.
Are females somewhere else? Are they using different habitats? Are we only seeing one piece of a much larger movement pattern?
For years, shark tagging was largely a waiting game. You tagged a shark, recorded the data, and hoped that somewhere down the line someone else would encounter that same shark again and report it. Now, with satellite tagging and platforms like FinFinder, that process has completely changed.
“I never dreamed as a little kid obsessed with wildlife that I’d be able to look at something on my phone… and go, ‘Man, there’s a shark that was just tagged there and the next day it’s over here,’” Dr. Banks said.
That’s not just a cool feature but a shift in how we understand shark movement. FinFinder allows people to track sharks in the western Gulf through a partnership between Harte Research Institute, CCA, and AFCTO.
It’s accessible online now, with a mobile app on the way, and it’s giving anglers, researchers, and everyday people a chance to see how these animals actually move.
And when you start watching those tracks, something becomes clear pretty quickly: the Gulf has its own story.
For a long time, shark research tended to lump the Gulf of Mexico into the broader Atlantic picture. But what Dr. Banks and her team are seeing suggests it’s not that simple.
“Up until recently, the Gulf was considered just part of the Atlantic. But we’re seeing now it’s a little more distinct and separate than we previously thought,” she said.
The movement data backs that up. Makos are making interesting treks across the Gulf. Hammerheads are showing consistent patterns along the Texas coast. Tiger sharks are repeatedly using specific areas like the Flower Garden Banks, which appears to be an important habitat for multiple species.
The mako work, in particular, is opening some interesting doors. Dr. Banks has focused on mako tagging for years, and one of the more notable findings involves female sharks.
“Our females have not left the Gulf,” she said.
That suggests a resident population, something that could have major implications for conservation and management. It also raises questions about whether parts of the Gulf serve as mating or pupping grounds. To dig deeper into that, the team has started using ultrasound technology in the field to better understand female reproduction and habitat use.
All of this ties back to movement. Where sharks go, when they go there, and how they use different habitats are some of the most important pieces of information researchers can gather. It’s also information that wasn’t easily available not that long ago.
FinFinder is helping change that, and it’s doing something else just as important—it’s making that information visible.
Instead of research being something that happens behind the scenes, this platform lets people see it in action. You can follow a shark, watch its track, and start to understand how it fits into the larger picture.
And that matters.
Because sharks have a way of drawing people in.
“Sharks are a great bridge to just caring about the ocean in general,” Dr. Banks said.
That natural curiosity is what FinFinder taps into. It gives people a reason to look closer and a way to stay connected.
What FinFinder ultimately does is shift perspective. Sharks stop being distant, mysterious creatures and start becoming part of a visible, trackable system. You begin to see patterns, movements, and behaviors that weren’t obvious before.
And the more those patterns come into focus, the more it becomes clear that the Gulf of Mexico isn’t just an extension of somewhere else. It’s its own environment, with its own dynamics, its own populations, and its own story that’s still being written every time a tagged shark moves across the Gulf.
Chester Moore
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