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Shark-eating Alligators in the Gulf

Matthew Field
Alligators

While you may be used to seeing alligators in and around lakes and ponds in Southwest Florida, it may come as a surprise they also sometimes venture to coastal waters.

New research documents instances of alligators preying on small sharks and stingrays in salt water along the Atlantic coasts of Georgia and Florida. We're joined by one of the researchers who conducted the study.

Dr. James Nifong is a researcher at Kansas State University. He and his colleagues spent nearly a decade studying alligators along the Florida and Georgia coasts. They captured more than 500 gators and pumped their stomachs see what they had consumed.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.