Sharks Pacific’s Research Director, Vinay Udyawer, co-authored a paper on tiger shark relocation off Queensland, Australia. Led by the Department of Primary Industries and in partnership with AIMS@JCU, the paper was published in Ocean and Coastal Management.
Read the paper >>
TLDR, you say? Here’s a breakdown.
- Using long-term acoustic tracking across the East coast of Australia we collected data on tiger shark movements and behaviors over 3 years. Some sharks were captured and relocated from popular beaches, and others were captured from areas away from beaches (as controls).
- The movements showed that there is a short-medium term deterrent effect of sharks that are relocated, where they seem to stay away for about 3 months. The ones that do return to the beaches tend to visit close to beaches mostly at night.
This data helps understand how mitigation measures like relocating sharks from popular beaches or fishing grounds may impact long-term human-shark interactions, and help reduce human-wildlife conflict.
