The Projects

Saving Great White Sharks in New Zealand

Next expedition: March 2007

There are only a few areas around the world that host relatively large populations of great white sharks: South Africa, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, and the USA. Of these few countries only the "home of the Kiwi" did not have full legal protection for great white sharks. However all this will change very soon. In April 2007 the Government of New Zealand will enact full protection to great white sharks. Due to their slow growth and reproduction rate great whites are very rare and extremely vulnerable to overfishing from both commercial and recreational fisheries. Therefore governmental efforts to protect the species across their range and especially in their preferred areas are crucial to their survival.

Dr. Ramón Bonfil, an independent shark researcher with more then 20 years of experience, is a "pro" when it comes to great white shark conservation. From 2002 to 2004 - while he worked as a conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) - he founded and was leader of a conservation research project in South Africa to gain more information about the ecology of white sharks and the threats they face. Using satellite tags he studied the migration patterns of these ocean giants in the waters off South Africa. This project lead to the successful listing of great white sharks in Appendix II of CITES (Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, www.cites.org) and a major scientific article in the journal Science reporting a number of extraordinary scientific discoveries about great white sharks.

But South Africa was not enough for the committed shark scientist: With the knowledge and the experience of this three-year study he set up a new conservation project in 2005 with the goal of helping save this magnificent apex predator in New Zealand. For this, Dr. Ramón Bonfil approached two of New Zealand’s foremost shark researchers, Mr. Clinton Duffy from the Department of Conservation (DoC) and Dr. Malcolm Francis from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA). This team deployed the first-ever satellite tags on "Kiwi" great white sharks (and any "Kiwi” sharks for that matter!) during April of 2005, thus proving the viability of this new white shark satellite tagging study.

Tristan, Tessa, Zola and Meca: The first sharks tagged in New Zealand

During their first satellite tagging expedition in New Zealand in 2005 the team travelled to the remote Chatham Islands where they met their skipper Tim Gregory-Hunt and his boat the Tessa B. In just a few days out at the sea they successfully tagged 4 great white sharks with pop-up archival tags (PAT-tags): Three females, Tessa, Zola and Meca and one male, Tristan.

Although only a small number of tags were put on sharks during this first trip, it was a very successful pilot project that proved the feasibility of a full-fledged project in this country. Most importantly the discoveries made during this pilot expedition proved extremely important to shed new knowledge about the ecology of great white sharks. To everyone’s surprise, three of the Chatham Islands’ white sharks tagged travelled to far away places never imagined by scientists. One shark moved over 1,000 km in a north-easterly direction to a site devoid of any islands or land masses in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. The other two sharks made even greater voyages travelling almost 3,000 km to tropical islands NW of New Zealand.

Unpredictable nature

With such a grand success on their back the team decide they had to return to the Chatham Islands to expand the research into a longer term project. By then already an independent researcher, Dr. Ramón Bonfil and his team launched the second tagging-expedition in March of 2006 with co-financing by NIWA, DoC, and grants by the National Geographic Society and the Eppley Foundation for Research. This time the team had very ambitious plans - the tagging of 15 great white sharks! And not only PAT-tags would be deployed: For the first time within the New Zealand project Dr. Bonfil was also going to use five "near-real-time" satellite tags which enable him to track the sharks detailed movements day after day.

However, as often happens with wild animals in their natural environment, things didn’t work as the team hoped. For reasons that continue to elude the scientific team, the white sharks of the Chatham Island were not interested in cooperating and no sharks were tagged during the 8 days that Dr. Bonfil and his colleagues attempted to do their job. Not even the presence of New Zealand’s Minister of the Environment and the press in the research boat was able to entice the sharks to come to the bait and try to take it. The scientists tried all their best tricks but the sharks kept coming to the boat very sporadically and never attempted to take the baits, as if they were not hungry at all!

The weather was also not very helpful and Dr. Bonfil and his team spent many days at shore without being able to go out to sea and try to find the sharks. At the end, this failure to make the sharks behave in a "normal" way and come eagerly to the baits so that they could be caught and tagged left the team baffled and disappointed. But when dealing with nature this is to be expected once in a while; wild animals are not always doing what we expect them to do and weather conditions are beyond human’s power.

Next expedition: March 2007

With renewed optimism, the team is ready to try once more to deploy the first real-time satellite tags on great white sharks in New Zealand and also deploy more PAT tags. This time around, a new less-remote location has been chosen by the research team. From March 15 to 21, the scientists will be attempting to find and tag great whites off the coast of Stewart Island, in the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island. Dr Bonfil and his colleagues are hoping to deploy up to 5 real-time satellite tags and up to 8 PAT tags. If successful, these tags will provide the largest and most important amount of information on the ecology of great white sharks from New Zealand.

We can only protect what we know - objectives of the project

The goal of this new study is to obtain key scientific information on the ecology of great white sharks and the main threats to their survival in New Zealand. Only with this knowledge governmental initiatives for the protection and the management of white sharks can be developed. Because we can only protect what we know!

With their new satellite tagging study Dr. Bonfil and his colleagues want to find answers to the mysterious life of great white sharks. Using satellite tracking devices the scientists will gain a better understanding of the size of the sharks’ home ranges, of their movements around New Zealand and the routes and timing of their migrations. They will be able to identify critical habitats for white sharks in New Zealand waters and to evaluate the main human-induced threats. Furthermore they will investigate the relationships between populations from New Zealand and those in other parts of the world. Or simply said: Do white sharks travel far for their honeymoon?