Save Our Seas Blogs

Cheryl-Samantha Owen reports from Day 1 at the Sharks International Conference in Cairns, Australia.

Today we were happily immersed in shark talk at the first fully international shark and ray conference in nearly 20 years. Sharks International kicked off in Cairns, Australia with over 200 delegates from 23 countries joining in a week long journey of sharing, learning, discovering and bridging the gaps in our knowledge about sharks.

Diving legends, Ron and Valerie Taylor, in the audience for the Sharks International Conference today. (Photo: Cheryl-Samantha Owen / SOSF)

It was great to have the Chief Scientist for Australia, Professor Penny Sackett, give an introductory speech urging the room full of scientists, students and conservationists to “share their passion with others.” Listening to many of the talks today it was clear that her message was well received. The opening day saw over 24 talks covering a wide range of shark-related research, including several talks by Save Our Seas Foundation supported scientists.

World renowned shark scientist, Barry Bruce was the keynote speaker talking about his research focusing on the movements and behaviour of sharks. He first used acoustic technology to track large white sharks in 1990 and then started using satellite tags for tracking juvenile white sharks in 2000. Barry started his talk with a myth-buster: “White sharks don’t live at seal colonies – they only visit them,” and then continued to give us a fascinating insight into his current research work on juvenile white sharks off the Australian coast.

There are significant gaps in the knowledge of why white sharks of different ages favour certain areas. Ranging from between 1.8 and 2m in length and 1 to 5 years old juvenile white sharks appear to inhabit one particular area – perhaps, because they find it “a good place to eat,” Barry says. “The protection of white sharks has led to opportunities to find out more about them,” and there is an exciting road of discoveries ahead to not only estimate population sizes, and when and where they move, but also to find out exactly what the sharks are doing along the way.

Dr Rupert Ormond, Chief Scientist for SOSF, drew us further into the world of migratory shark species by talking about how some individuals buck the trend of their species population’s movement pattern. It appears some individual basking sharks, white sharks and whale sharks in the NE Atlantic, South Africa and the Seychelles respectively take the path less traveled between feeding grounds and appear to be resident in feeding areas for different lengths of time, while the majority stick to a particular route and pattern. Perhaps as a youngster those individuals were exposed to different currents or water temperatures, which led them on their unique journey and they have simply stuck to it over the years. We are still trying to solve the mystery.

Following on from this Alison Kock from the SOSF Shark Centre in Cape Town presented her work on the year-round white shark presence in False Bay, South Africa with distinct seasonal changes in habitat utilisation. Her work highlighted that even though white sharks are fully protected in South Africa, there are many issues such as bycatch, poaching, impact of shark bites, habitat, prey loss and pollution that still affect these sharks.

A slide from Alison Kock's presentation at the conference today. (Photo: Cheryl-Samantha Owen / SOSF)

Sharks have feelings too, and they get stressed! Stressed to death in some cases. Several scientists presented their results on how sharks fare after being hung in the open ocean by a long lining hook – dragged along the sea floor in a trawler’s net or left by fishermen on a boat slowing suffocating before being thrown back into the sea. Sharks may have evolved over the past 400 million years – but they didn’t come equipped to deal with modern fishing torture techniques.

There were many more fascinating insights into the world of sharks today. For instance did you know that sharks have seven senses? Their sophisticated electroreceptor system, being one of them, enables them to pick up on an electrical impulse as small as ONE nanovolt. Imagine connecting two batteries across the Atlantic say 1,500m apart. A shark swimming through that line would feel the pulse. We wouldn’t! We also don’t have 2,000 taste buds, as some sharks do – we only have 195.

Going into all these fascinating facts will take a lot more blogging, so today I will leave you with these high-tech shark skin swimsuits. Yes, even Olympic swimmers have made use of the ingenious design of shark skin with swimwear makers mimicking the skin to create the fastest racing swimsuits around.

What more can we learn from these amazing creatures? Stay tuned to find out as we report back from the conference over the coming week.