Dr Riley Elliot's Great White App is a citizen-empowered project to help people co-exist with one of nature's greatest apex predators. Photo / Clinton Duffy
In February 2020, a juvenile Great White shark bit the surfboard of a surfer in Pauanui Beach.
Dr Riley Elliott, who specialises in shark behaviour and migration, later saw evidence of another Great White shark around a fishing boat at the Bowentown end of Tauranga Harbour.
During the summer of 2020-21, Dr Elliott photo-identified 15 individual Great White sharks from ones caught accidentally or filmed by fishermen in the Bowentown Harbour. Great Whites were again being regularly encountered by fishermen in the Bowentown area last summer along the coastline of the Bay of Plenty.
Surfers and water users were seeing them often, being bumped, and one teenage surfer was launched at by a Great White while riding a wave.
Dr Elliott hypothesised that there may be a growing population of juvenile Great Whites inhabiting the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel regions due to factors that include the success of Great White conservation programmes, climate change and increasing persistence of La Nina weather systems which spread the shark's habitat, along with changes to fishing methods like the banning of inshore gill nets. Dr Elliott recognised that a probable increase in Great White presence, overlapping with one of New Zealand's largest summer holiday hotspots, required investigation.
After attaining a DoC permit in June 2022, Dr Elliott is now able to commence some much-needed research on the Great Whites which have seen a significant increase and persistence of Great Whites in the region.
He was able to hold a community meeting at the Bowentown Boating and Fishing Club, where he provided context and rationale about why the sharks were likely present, and how to best operate over the summer period in order to avoid possible adverse interactions.
Juvenile Great Whites eat fish and small prey and humans do not visibly represent their natural prey. However, conservation success has also increased local seal populations.
Dr Reilly said, "The overlap of seals and this demographic of shark is potentially risky to water users and thus it is essential that the distribution of their habitat use and behaviour is defined and put in context with ours."
In order to answer three key questions - where did these sharks come from? why are they here? and how do their movement and behaviour overlap with ours? - tagging and tracking is required, by deploying satellite tags on the sharks and by taking small DNA tissue samples to aid in the collation of valuable information. The research has been permitted by DoC and has been developed and justified through consultation with local iwi.
The tagging aspect of this Great White Project is being supported by Sustainable Ocean Society, a not-for-profit set up by Dr Reilly, and some friends, to provide an avenue for the public to donate and sponsor a shark.
New Zealand does not have a large pool of funding resources for marine mega-predators. Conventional marine research funding generally comes from the fishing industry.
Dr Reilly said, "A Great White study, with a sponsor-a-shark approach, will enable groundbreaking information that will not only benefit the sharks, and the ecosystem they maintain, but also ourselves.
"The ultimate goal of this project is to tag Great Whites in the region and have their tracks displayed free on a live website for all the public to view, in order to enable the best possible decision-making as to where people decide to play in the ocean. This will be called the Great White App," said Dr Reilly.
The scientific understanding obtained by this tagging will also enable groundbreaking insight into the Great White shark and its habitation in a region which has been historically rare.
Satellite tags are not cheap ($3200 each) and they also require satellite time ($800 per year), and sponsorship requires a $4000, tax-deductible, charitable investment.
People or companies who sponsor a shark will be able to name "their" shark and will be provided with information and imagery about it for their own interest or for marketing purposes. Dr Elliott will provide written blogs for each shark tracked on the website. The Great White App will also have interactive layers that users can play with to visually see how these sharks utilise their environment, where activity is more common, and therefore how that may educate water users.
Dr Reilly said, "The goal of this citizen-empowered project is to co-exist with one of nature's greatest apex predators. Sharks are essential to healthy oceans, and, as Kiwis, we are proud to have some of the best marine habitats on earth, but we also enjoy playing in them so increasing our understanding of nature is essential in order for all of us."
The project will commence on December 1. There will be 20 tags available for naming rights. If you are interested in sponsoring a shark please send an email to sustainableoceansociety@gmail.com Alternatively, if this sponsored amount is too large for you but you would like to contribute financially please visit www.sustainableoceansociety.co.nz.