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New (Frightening?) Technology Lets You Track Great White Sharks Online

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Beneath the ocean, off the coast of California, lies the mysterious world of a ferocious predator. The Great White Shark.

Not much is known about their behavior and lifestyle.

But some secrets are coming to life thanks to the work of marine biologists at Stanford University and a sea-faring robot out of Silicon Valley.

"Within seconds of a white shark swimming by, we receive a signal and, right to your iPhone or another device, you can actually see the shark that's there," according to Barbara Block, Ph.D, of Stanford. "Here they are: those red markers reveal where and when they're traveling."

Block is talking about technology that scientists are using to track the Great Whites in a way no one has ever done before.

Scientists from Stanford and Monterey Bay Aquarium travel to shark hot-spots off the coast. In a dinghy, they lure the Great Whites to the surface using a seal decoy and tag them with a special acoustic device.

The device sends out a coded ping.

"And we've put receivers in those areas that receive acoustic signals," according to Randall Kochevar, Ph.D, of Stanford.

The code goes straigt up to a satellite and then back to the web, revealing their locations.

It's giving scientists invaluable information about the hidden world of California's Great Whites.

"If we understand what is happening with the predators, we can begin to get a picture of how the whole ecosystem functions," Kochevar said. "And if we can see them, the hope? We may want to save them, as well as our endangered oceans."

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