A blue shark has made history off the Bay of Plenty coast this week by diving 1250m in search for squid.

Bodhi, a 2.5m male blue shark, dived 1250m deep off the Bay of Plenty coast on Tuesday.

Bodhi, the blue shark.

Google Earth image of Bodhi and his tracked movements. The blue dot indicates the site where Bodhi dived to 1250m recording the world's deepest ever recorded depth a blue shark has gone. The previous record was recorded by Queiroz et al. 2012 by a 1.8m Female blue shark off Portugal.

University of Auckland PhD student Riley Elliott tagged Bodhi three weeks ago off the Coromandel Peninsula as part of his study to track the habitat and migration of blues sharks in New Zealand waters.

Bodhi is one of eight sharks being monitored with tags transmitting their location to Riley's computer.

Riley Elliot.

'This guy went from the Coromandel out into the Bay of Plenty area and went about 100km off the Bay of Plenty,” says Riley.

'There he's in 2000m of water at a big underwater volcano, and for some reason he realised he wanted to go down for a dive - so he went from the surface water down to the deepest recorded depth a blue shark has ever gone.”

He says the previous record was held by a 1.8m female blue shark tagged in Portugal. She dived to 1160m.

Riley believes Bodhi was probably chasing squid which makes up around 60 per cent of a blue shark's diet.

'It's unusual for sharks to dive so deep. They usually stay in the top layer of water because it isn't efficient for an animal to do that unless they're getting a reward, so that further supports the idea that it's foraging.”

For more information about Riley's Blue shark tagging research visit rileyelliott.com

Riley is asking people fishing in the Bay of Plenty or Coromandel area who see a blue shark with a satellite tag on it (matchbox sized perspex object with aerial attached to dorsal fin), not catch the catch.
'If already on the line, please bring in to boat gently and cut the line as close to the hook as possible.”

People are asked to reports of any sightings to [email protected] or rileyelliott.com