Tiger shark highlights video

Jul 08, 2016

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Tiger shark highlights video

The above video shows video tag highlights from two tiger sharks tagged at Ningaloo in May of this year. We learn a lot from these videos, including the types of habitats the tiger sharks swim through, the other animals they interact with and the time of day they are most active. As you can see the tiger sharks aren't always hungry, with this being just a taster of the number of turtles we observed in the tag videos. Try and spot the other shark species towards the video after a strange burst of behaviour by the tiger shark. We also have video from nighttime, which at first glimpse looks like a shark swimming through space (which is just particles and plankton shooting by, and what looks like a ray swimming over at the end of the video). 

This video comes from just two tiger sharks. Imagine what we could get from 30 tiger sharks! Your support will make this possible.

Process

Explanation

Mike, Joanne, and 2 others like this.

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Mike MuenchBacker

I am having a hard time correlating the very interesting graph showing the change in depth with the video, that for the most part shows the shark following the surface of the sea floor. It doesn't really illustrate what I was expecting to see which was climbing and descending in the water. It would be great if the video showed the depth in the corner of the screen. To me it seems like expanding and retracting the swim bladder uses less energy while covering more volume of water, like you eluded to in one of your videos. Best wishes to you and your project and to Madison Stewart for all the great works you do.

Jul 08, 20160

Sammy AndrzejaczekResearcher

Hi Mike, the graph is from data collected a year ago, and this footage is from just a month and a half ago so I haven't had a lot of time to put the data together! Good idea to put depth with the video though! I'll give it a go in the future. Sharks don't actually have a swim bladder but can use their negative buoyancy and gravity to glide down in what we call drift dives.

Jul 08, 20160

About This Project

Why do tiger sharks swim up and down the water column? – An up-close view of their vertical movements

The University of Western Australia Oceans Institute

Tiger sharks are among the strangest behaving sharks in our oceans. They eat everything from turtles to car tires and continually dive up and down. However, we know next to nothing about their hunting and movement strategies. Characterizing these are important to effectively manage tiger shark populations and understand ecosystem dynamics. This project will tag up to 30 tiger sharks at Ningaloo Reef, recording video, depth and acceleration to better understand these patterns.