00:00with summer upon us the warm weather is seeing many of us head to the beach well let's talk to
00:07dr paul butcher who is the principal research scientist for the new south wales government's
00:12shark tagging and tracking program he joins us now dr butcher thank you for joining us today
00:17generally speaking what do we know of shark movement this time of year uh this time of the
00:23year we have bull sharks traveling down from queensland into new south wales waters we have
00:28tiger sharks here all year round and our white sharks that we've had between may and october
00:33have all gone back down to tasmania and victorian waters and so you're mentioning there the ones
00:39we're most concerned about whites tigers and bull sharks of course um where are they most likely
00:45to be encountered even if that is so rare yeah well white sharks are found along our entire coastline
00:52between may and october november every year bull sharks head back up to queensland waters for
00:58our winter time but at this time of the year they're traveling uh south along our new south wales
01:03uh systems into our rivers to to pop and and they'll continue on migrating down our coastline over the
01:09summer do they prefer the deeper water or not necessarily no they come back to the same rivers
01:14uh every year to to pop the females uh you'll find them off our coastal beaches um right throughout summer
01:21and i guess the biggest thing for us is just staying clear of those conditions where sharks might be
01:26around um early early dawn and dusk um if there's lots of bait fish around and in murky conditions
01:32if we get lots of rain and can you just expand on that dawn or dusk for us why is that yeah well sharks
01:40uh use uh the conditions to hunt and and early in the morning when it's a bit darker the sun's not up
01:46there they're actively feeding so especially for tigers and and and bull sharks white sharks can be found
01:51at any time of the day uh their peak periods of detection on the tag shark listening stations
01:56and also capture on our smart drum lines is between 11 and 1 pm each day and how is that shark tagging
02:03and tracking program going i mean there have been a number of sharks tagged now yeah over the last 10
02:08years we've tagged almost 1600 gray whites uh 760 tiger sharks and around 260 bull sharks so those animals
02:18are actively detected and picked up on the shark smart app so anybody from the public can can follow
02:24these animals as they move up and down our coastline not only seeing where they are now where they were
02:28last detected and also also where they were originally tagged as well what's the uptake of that app been
02:34like really good we've had more than 3 billion push notifications over the last 10 years and and more
02:41than 300 000 users of the shark smart app that that uh that increases a lot over the summer period when
02:48when people are going to the beach and they just want to know what's off their beaches back to that
02:53shark tagging i mean it's a big job what happens when a shark sets off the alert we have 20 contractor
03:00locations along 1300 kilometers of coastline so we get a real-time alert the contractors get out to those
03:07animals within often uh 14 to 16 minutes we give them half an hour but they're really fast to those
03:13animals to minimize any stress our survival rates on our smart drum lines are almost 99 and we catch a
03:20range of sharks if we catch a great white tiger or bull shark it's tagged with an acoustic tag and those
03:25tags then last for 10 years as we uh we we follow those animals as they move up and down the east coast
03:31and um and also further afield we have animals going to new zealand poppa new guinea um other animals
03:37travel great whites traveling to western australia three times uh back more than 40 000 kilometers over
03:42a three-year period and so can we have any estimate as to what percentage of these shark populations have
03:49been tagged uh for bull sharks and tiger sharks where we're looking at those populations now uh for white
03:56sharks the most recent estimates um are between sort of five and a half and seven and a half thousand
04:02animals in that population so we've tagged almost yeah 1600 uh over the last 10 years and as part of
04:09the new survival government shark management program we'll continue to not only tag those animals but we
04:14take a range of biological samples to to keep on assessing those those populations over the following years
04:21finally dr butcher we know that shark nets have been controversial
04:25where is drone surveillance out at this point and would it or anything else be enough to replace those
04:30nets yeah the the whole program is around using a a suite of tools to to minimize the chance of a
04:37shark bite uh drones is right up the top smart drum lines at 305 locations we have 37 tag shark
04:44listening stations and we currently still have nets between wollongong and newcastle as part of a a
04:50suite of different um tools that we use in the program dr paul butcher the principal research
04:56scientist for the new south wales government shark tagging and tracking program coming to us there
05:00from coffs harbour thank you thank you
05:10you
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