Collective behaviours and spatial occurrence of sharks within the Shark Bay World Heritage Area and along Australia's coastline

The proposed project for the funding year 2023-2024 is embedded into my PhD, which focuses on examining collective and coordinated behaviours of sharks with a key focus on habitat usage patterns. The use of satellite tagging has revealed areas within the Shark Bay World Heritage Area, Western Australia, that are a hotspot for tiger sharks and shown their broader movement patterns in and out of the bay. However, how this species use the marine park on a finer scale is currently unknown. In collaboration with the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and partners from the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, this project will deploy the first acoustic receiver network in this region and acoustically tag tiger sharks to reveal their fine scale movement patterns. Acoustic tags efficiently collect long-term data (up to 10 years) on movements of individuals, without the need for animals to surface for data transmitting to a satellite.