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Beneath Shark Skin

November 30, 2012

This fall, a fisherman in California caught this four foot-long great white shark and brought it to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where it died a short time later. The six month-old female was then sent overnight packed in ice to WHOI biologist Darlene Ketten, who conducts computerized tomography (CT) scans of sharks, rays, and skates for a researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina. Ketten’s ultra-high resolution scans, obtained at the CSI Computerized Scanning and Imaging Facilty at WHOI, provide a richly-detailed picture of the animals’ skeleton and soft tissue, offering clues about how they evolved to function effectively underwater.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)