A crew from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) have caught and tagged another six white sharks.
This takes the State’s total to 115, 54 of which have been tagged in the past four years.
The tagging program is a regular feature of DPIRD staff managing fisheries along Western Australia’s West, South-West and southern coasts.
WA’s Chief Scientist, Peter Klinken said the latest tagging took place when a rotting whale carcass drifted onto Yeagarup Beach approximately 60 kilometres south of Augusta.
“Whale carcasses attract sharks and offer opportunities for tagging, although weather and other environmental conditions must be right to undertake the highly specialised work,” Professor Klinken said.
“During the Yeagarup Beach operation, the specialist DPIRD crew tagged a 4.1-metre white shark, and another measuring 3.5 metres, in just over an hour. The following day, when they returned to the site, they tagged a 3.8-metre white shark.”
He said three smaller white sharks, between 1.75 metres and 3.2 metres, were also tagged at the site about a week later.
He said tagging occurred each year near Garden Island when white sharks are attracted to snapper aggregations, but targeted tagging, which is a separate activity to the tagging undertaken in the SMART Drumline Trial, can occur anytime conditions are right.
Minister for Fisheries, Peter Tinley said the DPIRD’s white shark tagging program helped support the Shark Monitoring Network.
“This monitoring network lets beach users in the Perth metropolitan area, the South-West region and around Albany and Esperance know when a tagged shark is near one of the satellite-linked receivers,” Mr Tinley said.
