Researchers fitted sharks with ingestible and strap-on cameras to gain more insight into their mysterious lives.

These video recorders and sensors recorded where the sharks went, and what they did when they reached their destination, a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa news release reported.

The ingestible cameras allowed the team to learn more about the shark's eating habits. The sophisticated instrument uses electrical measurements to track the shark's ingestion and digestion. This technique allows researchers to see "where, when and how much sharks and other predators are eating, and what they are feasting on," the news release reported.

The cameras give scientists a "shark's eye view" of their natural habitat.

"What we are doing is really trying to fill out the detail of what their role is in the ocean," Carl Meyer, an assistant researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, said in the news release. "It is all about getting a much deeper understanding of sharks' ecological role in the ocean, which is important to the health of the ocean and, by extension, to our own well-being."

Through these observations the researchers saw sharks of different species swimming in schools together as well as interacting with other fish. The team also observed the sharks moving in "repetitive loops" along the ocean's bottom.

The team found sharks tended to use "powered swimming" more often than gliding; this is contradictory to what researchers previously believed.  

"These instrument packages are like flight data recorders for sharks," Meyer said. "They allow us to quantify a variety of different things that we haven't been able to quantify before."

"It has really drawn back the veil on what these animals do and answered some longstanding questions," he said.

These findings could help researchers learn how to better protect these sharks, a species that is rapidly disappearing. The research could also help us learn more about shark attack prevention.