The Western Australia Department of Fisheries reports that it is continuing to roll out its Shark Monitoring Network and has deployed two new satellite-linked tagged shark monitors. Shark Monitoring Network project manager Mark Kleeman said the network now had deployed 23 satellite-linked monitors.
“Along with the satellite-linked monitors, there are approximately 320 seabed monitors located throughout Western Australia that also monitor tagged sharks, and each time that data is physically retrieved it will help to establish a much broader snapshot for understanding shark behavior and movement,” he said. As of December, 338 sharks had been tagged.
When a tagged shark comes within range of a monitor, a message is generated over the Surf Life Saving Western Australia (SLSWA) Twitter feed at twitter.com/slswa. As Salon's Lindsay Abrams puts it, “Australia's sharks will now tweet before attacking.”
The monitoring network makes use of acoustic receivers and transmitters such as those from Vemco, a Canadian company whose products have been called “BlackBerrys for fish.”
