SEASIDE >> Monterey County residents who watch CNN this weekend may be able to catch a group of Cal State Monterey Bay students and staff featured on the international show “Tech for Good.”

Faculty member Salvador Jorgensen’s research team, through the university’s marine science department, developed technology to tag and monitor juvenile white sharks in the area. Hosted by CNN reporter Kristie Lu Stout, the episode will premiere Saturday at 3:30 a.m. local time and be featured again on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.

“We’re really filling in the gaps of what scientists are able to do and be able to get a better picture of our ecosystem as a whole,” said Dylan Moran, a graduate student and lab technician who developed the technology featured in the CNN episode.

In late June, Stout and a team from CNN visited the campus, toured the shark lab and went out to Santa Cruz to observe the team tagging sharks with the lightweight motion tracker which clips onto the shark’s dorsal fin.

The episode will also feature other institutions working on marine science research, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute located in Moss Landing.

Jorgensen’s lab has been working on these tags for years and testing out different variations to see what works best for their goals.

“Each one of these tags that we’re seeing on this show, we’ve gone through multiple iterations to make it safer for the animal as well as more refined for our goal to help answer these ecological questions,” said Moran.

The team is “looking to see how (sharks) are interacting with Monterey Bay as an environment because they haven’t been here historically,” said graduate student Kelsey Montalto.

In 2014 there was a marine heatwave called “the Blob,” which caused a large mass of unusually warm water in the Pacific. Before the heatwave, juvenile white sharks were primarily further down south and they didn’t come this far north. After 2014, more and more sharks began to be spotted in the Central Coast.

Montalto worked with an ocean instrumentation capstone class this past spring to develop a tag that could be used in her research to determine the characteristics that made sharks travel north following the heatwave.

Their primary idea is the sharks migrated because they were looking for cooler temperatures. The tags are fitted with temperature sensors, magnetometers and accelerometers that show where and how the sharks are turning in response to temperature changes. Montalto is also using satellite data to see if there’s any other parameters that could affect their movement.

“The CNN program is a great opportunity for us to showcase Cal State Monterey Bay’s marine science program for an international audience and to show the world what makes the experience we offer students so unique,” said President Vanya Quiñones in an email.

Since it was important to the team to make this tracker non-invasive, it’s pretty difficult to attach it. The researchers have to wait patiently for a shark to swim near the surface and then sneakily latch it onto the dorsal fin with a spring-activated clip before the shark swims away.

The team uses a fin-clamp method that doesn’t penetrate the skin of the animal, according to Moran. The tags are programmed to release after a set amount of time so researchers can go back and collect the data.

When the team found out CNN wanted to feature their work, they “felt that it would be a really good opportunity to showcase what university students, and even in this case a high school student, is able to do and research and how they can impact the scientific world,” said Moran.

The lab originally created bigger tags to track great white movement, but have been delving more into developing those smaller tags for other groups including leopard sharks. The work is “a happy medium of being able to integrate the sensors we still needed for the white sharks to apply some of the same research questions to the leopard sharks that very little is known about in comparison,” according to Montalto.

“At Cal State Monterey Bay, we’re proud that our students and faculty are exploring cutting-edge technology as a way to advance what we know about marine life in the Bay,” said Andrew Lawson, provost and vice president for academic affairs in an email. “By developing a smaller tag, they’ve found a way to track a new subset of animals and I’m excited to see what their data reveals about animal behavior.”

There’s a possibility the Jorgensen Lab could be featured on CNN again later this year. In November, the network is planning to host a live-show with some of the researchers that have been featured in the current season of “Tech for Good.” The public will have the opportunity to vote for which teams they’d like to learn more about.

“We’re super excited about (the show),” said Moran. “We’re hoping that everyone is able to vote for us and we’ll be able to do this live show (so) we’re able to showcase what CSUMB does on a broader stage.”