Diary of a tiger shark: watch a day in the life of Boof!
The Sequeira Lab and the Ocean Park Aquarium joined forces to monitor the release of Boof, a subadult tiger shark, who’s been housed in Ocean Park for the last few years!
3-December-2022 (written by Oliver Jewell)
The Sequeira Lab and the Ocean Park Aquarium joined forces to monitor the release of Boof, a subadult tiger shark, who’s been housed in Ocean Park for the last few years!
Dr Oliver Jewell, from the SequeiraLab flew to Shark Bay with some tagging gear in tow and met Stacy Blane, head scientist at Ocean Park, to prepare for Boof’s release. To record Boof’s movements in the hours after his release, we used one of our Customized Animal Tracking Solutions (CATS) camera tags and attached it to Boof's dorsal fin. With this camera tag we were aiming to record Boof’s swimming depth, acceleration, and direction of movement, as well as the ambient water temperature and light levels he experienced. Importantly, this tag also contains satellite and VHF transmitters that reveal its location once it detached from Boof, which is very important for recovery of gear. The CATS camera tag remained on Boof’s fin for around 24 hrs and, upon release on the following morning, it tracked down and recovered by the Ocean Park team. It contained more than 25 GB of valuable data about Boof's movements, including 5 hrs of footage showing what Boof has encountered! You can get a glimpse into what Boof was up to in the video below!
We are ever grateful to Ocean Park Aquarium and to the Department of Fisheries, Denham, for making our involvement in this release possible. It was a great collaboration, and we now look forward to learning what the analyses of these data will show. Stay tuned for more news!
https://videopress.com/v/3qF4MRR6?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true