Friday, May 1, 2009

Australia - Shark Tagging System

A few months ago we posted several stories about the antiquated shark killing system from the 1960's still in use on some beaches in Australia today.

The images of a dead sub adult white shark to us was appalling.

Better news today as a new tagging and early warning system goes into place allowing both researchers and ocean users a real time assessment of predatory threats without killing the animals:

A monitoring system which tracks White Pointer sharks off the coast of Perth could soon be used to warn swimmers if sharks are nearby. A network of acoustic receivers was deployed off metropolitan beaches last year to monitor 100 tagged sharks.

The Department of Fisheries says the aim of the program is to learn more about the behaviour and movement of sharks. Research scientist Rory McAuley says the system could also become a public safety tool.

"We'll be able to provide alerts to public safety agencies and officers when a tagged shark does turn up close to a populated beach," he said.

Complete Story

1 comment:

WhySharksMatter said...

I'm skeptical of how effective this would be from a public safety standpoint. By most estimates, scientists aren't able to tag a terribly high percentage of sharks within a population.