Sensible people might prefer to flee at torpedo speed from a great white shark, but there’s one job in Australia that pays you to race towards the predators. And when you reach the big fish, you have to fix a tracker to its dorsal fin while bobbing in a boat on the ocean swell. The job is key to a sophisticated protection network that lets swimmers, surfers and fishers check for the aquatic hunters in real time when they venture into the water.
The so-called smart drumlines have baited hooks and when a shark takes a bite it is caught, sending a signal to the tagging team. But it’s not the wild “rodeo” people might think, said Paul Butcher, principal research scientist for the state government shark tagging and tracking programme for the past 10 years. “The sharks are really benign.
The process has little impact on those sharks,” he told AFP. A boat races to the buoy within 16 minutes of the alert. If the fish is one of three potentially dangerous species — a great white, bull shark or tiger shark — team members get to work. They wrap two ropes around the animal: one near its tail and another in front of the pectoral fin to support its body.
Read Full Article on The Witness
