Tiger shark caught in SMART drumlines off Dee Why Beach
A huge 2.5m tiger shark has been caught and tagged off a popular beach by the new SMART drumlines being trialled off Sydney beaches.
NSW
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A huge 2.5m tiger shark was caught and tagged off Dee Why last week by the new SMART drumlines being trialled off Sydney beaches.
Along with white and bull sharks, tiger sharks are a potential danger to humans but they are more common in tropical waters.
Tiger sharks, which can grow up to 4.5 metres, were also responsible for the recent spate of attacks in the Whitsundays.
Dr Daniel Bucher, marine ecologist from Southern Cross University, said tiger sharks prefer the tropics but the East Australian Current, which travels down the coastline carrying warm water, sometimes meant tiger sharks visited Sydney.
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“Their centre of abundance is the tropics, they’re a tropical species, but the East Australia Current has eddies that spin off carrying warm tropic water down past Sydney, so tiger sharks will go down past Sydney,” Dr Bucher said.
“There is also a six to 10 year cycle when tigers are more common in Sydney and it has to do with the warm currents,” Dr Bucher said.
Melbourne medical researcher Daniel Christidis was killed by a tiger shark in the Whitsundays in November last year. A 12 year old girl and Justine Barwick were also mauled in the Whitsundays near Cid Harbour in September by a tiger shark.
Sydney’s SMART drumline trial started in February and are positioned in seven locations from Barrenjoey to Newport and from Dee Why to Manly beaches. The three month trial will determine if they can reduce the risk of shark attacks at Sydney beaches in comparison to netting.
A spokeswoman for the DPI said since August 2015 the NSW DPI Shark Management Strategy has tagged 332 White Sharks 69 Tiger Sharks and 83 Bull Sharks.
The smart drum lines in the trial have not caught any white or bull sharks so far.
Sharks tagged by the Department of Primary Industries are fitted with acoustic and identification tags to allow the network of 21 listening stations located from Tweed Heads to Merimbula to pick up when a shark swims within 500 metres. The data is then posted to the shark smart app.
Originally published as Tiger shark caught in SMART drumlines off Dee Why Beach
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