Our Changing World
Starts at 9:06 pm on Thursday, 10 May 2012
Tagging Great White Sharks
During Nights with Bryan Crump
For the last six years a joint NIWA-Department of Conservation research team has been tagging and photographing great white sharks in Foveaux Strait, in an effort to learn how many of these enigmatic predators live there and how they spend their year.
Satellite tagging has shown that each winter the sharks migrate to the tropics, returning in summer to ‘hang out’ near seal colonies around Stewart Island. Acoustic tags are now revealing more about how sharks move around the local area.
Alison Ballance joins shark experts Malcolm Francis and Clinton Duffy on their annual tagging trip as they lure great white sharks alongside the boat and attempt to attach acoustic and satellite tags. They take photographs to individually identify sharks from their colours and patterns, and they soon meet new sharks such as the strikingly-marked Scar Face, along with old familiars such as Horse and Marbletail.
Produced by Alison Ballance for Radio New Zealand National
