No hold up to shark tagging

A nautical mishap aboard a Department of Fisheries boat earlier this month is not expected to hold up an intensive great white shark tagging program started in response to four shark attack deaths in WA in the past eight months.

Picture by Department of Fisheries

PV Hamelin was long-lining for sharks in south coast waters as part of the department’s extended Shark Monitoring Network when it drifted onto a shallow sandbank, damaging its propeller.

It was transported back to Fremantle for repairs and replaced over the weekend with PV Houtman, a state-of-the-art 20m fishing vessel sent from Geraldton to Albany to continue operations.

The department’s shark response unit manager Michael Burgess said the accident illustrated the logistical challenges with marine research, but would not interrupt the tagging program.

“The first long-lining activities began over the Easter weekend off Albany as part of a three to four-week program to capture and tag white sharks,” he said.

“No white sharks were captured in these initial efforts but some large dusky whaler sharks were caught.

“So our staff had the chance to refine the fishing gear and procedures and learn more about handling big sharks safely.”

Tagging activities in WA are part of a two-year extension of the SMN, which also involves researchers in South Australia where white sharks are known to congregate.

“The extension of the SMN and the need to tag white sharks in our waters has led us to start actively fishing for them, while also boosting our response to opportunistic tagging attempts,” Mr Burgess said. “Although we’re making these extra efforts, capturing and tagging white sharks in WA waters will continue to be a difficult task.”

Fisheries are also deploying subsea acoustic receivers, which detect messages emitted by acoustic transmitters attached to tagged sharks.

Lines of receivers have already been placed off Bald Island near Albany, Chatham Island near Walpole and numerous other locations off the WA coast near Perth and the along the Ningaloo coast.

“This means any white shark already fitted with an acoustic transmitter, swimming through WA waters will, under most conditions, be detected by these lines of acoustic receivers,” Mr Burgess said.

josh.nyman@albayadvertiser.com