A school of bull sharks in Fiji.

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At a Glance

While bull sharks have large migratory patterns and move quite a bit,they are very loyal to their nursery grounds.Bull sharks can grow to 11 feet and are one of the few sharkspecies that may inhabit freshwater.

Climate change has prompted predatorial bull sharks to move their nurseries some 500 miles farther north along the East Coast, a new study says.

The report published this week in Scientific Reports notes that while bull sharks have large migratory patterns and move quite a bit,they are very .

Prior to this discovery, the most northerly known nurseries in the Atlantic were located off Florida's east coast. In recent years, however, nurseries have been relocated north to the Pamlico Sound, which lies between the Outer Banks and North Carolina’s coast.

The discovery was a fluke, the researchers said.

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While working to characterize shark habitat in North Carolina, the researchers from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, Simon Fraser Universityand East Carolina University found that a greaternumber ofjuvenilebull sharks,which remain at nurserygrounds during their formative years, were reported in the brackish waters of Pamlico Sound.

"My co-authors and I were when we started analyzing coastal shark catch data from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries," lead author Chuck Bangley said in a blog post on Southern Fried Science. "In fact, previous evidence would have convinced us that bull sharks would likely be rare."

Bangley says it's the warming waters that may have prompted the sharks togive birth to theirpups further north.

"Basically, changes in temperature are likely to allow marine animals to move into places they haven’t before, and if those temperature changes become consistent, these species might make regular visits or even just start staying there," Bangley wrote, adding that bull sharks seem to have "taken a liking to Pamlico Sound as a nursery habitat" since 2012.

"Whatever conditions bull sharks prefer for choosing a nursery must have crossed a threshold where they’re just right for mother sharks to drop their pups off in North Carolina instead of Florida," Bangley wrote.

According to FloridaFish and Wildlife, bull sharks and are one of the few sharkspecies that may inhabit freshwater. They've even been known to venture hundreds of miles inland via coastal river systems.

They typically birth one to 13 pups inshallow bays and coastal lagoons.