Great white sharks

Although not being conducted by The University of Auckland, we can't pass up the opportunity to mention ongoing work by Clinton Duffy of the Department of Conservation, Dr Malcolm Francis and Michael Manning of NIWA, and Dr Ramon Bonfil of Shark-Tracker.  Clinton and his colleagues have been attaching PAT tags to great white sharks around Chatham and Stewart Islands since April 2005. 

Their results show that white sharks tagged in these areas are generally resident around the islands for three to five months before undertaking relatively rapid long distance migrations:

• Three sharks tagged at the Chatham Islands all moved north towards the tropics in winter. One moved over 1000 km northeast towards the Louisville Ridge before its tag released, one travelled to New Caledonia and the other to southern Vanuatu.
• One large female tagged at Stewart Island appears to have made an excursion south to Auckland Islands before travelling over 3000 km to Swain Reefs off Rockhampton in Queensland.

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