Bull Shark Tracked On Sydney Harbour Cruise

June 23, 2009

Release from: Rhett Watson
Daily Telegraph (Australia)

It could have been any tourist visiting Sydney and wanting to see the highlights: Manly, Watsons Bay and out to Cockatoo Island.

This tourist, however, is renowned as one of the world's maneaters - a bull shark.

And during his 14-day tour after being tagged on March 24 off Balls Head, the 2.47m menace was tracked covering at least 300km from Abbotsford to Manly and all stops in between, before heading out to sea and north.

He was one of two tagged by the Department of Primary Industries in March and tracked through 28 "listening posts" from Rhodes on the Parramatta River to the Heads and 200 more along the NSW coast.

In depth section: Sharks, menace from the deep

"This is something that no one else has ever done before, so for the first time we'll be able to monitor where these sharks go, how long they stay in one place, whether they home, whether they have neighbourhoods they hang around in or whether their movements are all just random," DPI chief scientist Steve Kennelly said.

Another 55 sharks have already been tagged throughout NSW as part of the program. The move into Sydney Harbour was fast-tracked after the bull shark attack on navy diver Paul de Gelder, who lost his hand and a leg on February 11, off Garden Island.

"The bull shark part of the program was going to be done in Port Hacking but after the attack it was pretty obvious there was at least one in Sydney Harbour," Mr Kennelly said.

He said it was too soon to say whether bull sharks were the predominant species in the Harbour but conceded that in two attempts - March 4 and 24 - they had only caught two of the same species.

"If we keep getting bull sharks when we're out there then that would be the conclusion but we're still six months away from that," he said.

The first shark high-tailed it out of Sydney within eight hours of being tagged but it was the second that gave the DPI scientists some valuable information.

It spent most of its time around Mann Point, west of the Harbour Bridge, and travelled mostly at night.

"We don't know yet why it was hanging around the Harbour but it's probably something to do with their feeding patterns," Mr Kennelly said.

Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said the data would help to better educate the community about the risk of shark attacks.