Shark Spy is a citizen science project that collaborates with schools and communities to collect baseline data on New Zealand sharks using local knowledge and community sightings in tandem with scientific survey methods.

 

There is currently a lack of data pertaining to shark species that inhabit coastal ecosystems around New Zealand. Sharks play an important role as apex or meso-predators by shaping coastal food webs via top-down control and risk effects. Unfortunately, the lack of basic demographic information on many species in New Zealand limits conservation, management and policy initiatives (Ford et al., 2018). 

 

In this project you can help fill in some these gaps, specifically species richness and abundance. As mentioned above the way we do this is by using baited underwater video stations. Video is great as it is cheap to produce, it can be saved and reused for future projects, and its non-invasive to the animals that visit the station. While the presence of the baited station does present some biases, they are far more manageable than those of having a diver in the water, or physically catching and restraining the animals.

 

From this video alone we can calculate a species richness (number of different species), a relative abundance (how many of a single species we can see in a single frame at a time), and we can get an estimate of size. Some species (e.g., sevengill sharks) can be individually identified using body markings (Lewis et al., 2021). Resighting a known individual further allows us to track where and when sharks may be moving to.

 

In all we hope that this data can be used in upcoming strategic meetings on the national plan of action for sharks in New Zealand. All sightings information is also forwarded onto iNaturalist (Shark Spy) so that the data and information is freely available for the use of schools, community groups, or interested parties.