{"id":240735,"date":"2026-07-13T13:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/scientists-to-track-critically-endangered-tope-sharks-in-the-solent"},"modified":"2026-07-13T13:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T18:14:11","slug":"scientists-to-track-critically-endangered-tope-sharks-in-the-solent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/scientists-to-track-critically-endangered-tope-sharks-in-the-solent","title":{"rendered":"Scientists to track critically endangered tope sharks in the Solent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-to-track-critically-endangered-tope-sharks-in-the-solent.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of Britain\u2019s largest and most endangered sharks is to be tracked through the busy waters of the Solent, following a \u00a3230,000 research grant awarded to scientists at the University of Portsmouth \u2013 part of the largest ever government investment in recovering England\u2019s threatened wildlife.<\/p>\n<p>The tope shark, listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, can grow to nearly two metres in length, yet remains largely invisible to the public despite living in some of the UK\u2019s most heavily trafficked coastal waters.<\/p>\n<p>Facing sustained pressure from overfishing, bycatch, habitat loss and wider environmental change, tope populations have declined significantly across their global range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of Britain\u2019s largest and most endangered sharks is to be tracked through the busy waters of the Solent, following a \u00a3230,000 research grant awarded to scientists at the University of Portsmouth \u2013 part of the largest ever government investment in recovering England\u2019s threatened wildlife. The tope shark, listed as critically endangered on the IUCN [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-habitats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}