Since they are prefer warm temperatures and feed on non-migratory animals such as spiny lobsters, small squid, and mollusks, nurse sharks stay in the same tropical locations all their lives. No one knows for certain where they are in the cold months of the year in New England. Large sharks that living in temperate waters include the great white shark, the shortfin mako shark, and the basking shark. These large temperate sharks can generate their own body heat and are therefore able to travel farther than smaller temperate sharks, which cannot. Although large temperate sharks will travel into tropical waters, they will swim only at depths where the temperature is in their preferred range.
Smaller sharks are much more affected by heat and cold and stay within their limits.
During the summer months, they will move up into the coastal New England area. When water temperatures begin to cool again in the fall, sandbars start their return trip to warmer southern waters along the coast of Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. In the North Atlantic part of their range, shortfin makos migrate from the Sargasso Sea in the south, up towards the northeastern coast of the U.S. in early summer as northern waters warm up. The depth of the ocean's water is another factor affecting water temperatures and where shark's live. Examples of shallow water sharks are the nurse, the hammerhead, the sandbar, the great white and the tiger shark.