A great white shark identified as Daisy and tagged by scientist Riley Elliott.
A great white shark identified as Daisy and tagged by scientist Riley Elliott.
Dabbling in warm, shallow, coastal water for a dusk swim sounds like a luxurious way to spend a summers eve - and the sharks agree.
The ocean predators, equally partial to sunbathing on the shore, have held top real estate on news websites across Aotearoa this summer fortheir beach-side antics and presence at popular swimming spots.
Shark scientist Dr Riley Elliott tells The Front Page while the ocean is our playground, it’s their home and their presence close to shore has nothing to do with people.
“These sharks do their own thing 99 per cent of the time because we as humans really in mass numbers only go into the ocean during this holiday period and at those times, ironically, is when these sharks are also coming in seasonally into shallower water because of their own needs,” Elliott says.
He said female bronze whalers are largely the sharks being spotted in New Zealand right now and they come close to shore to drop their pups into shallow waters.
Another reason they may be seen near a coastline is because they feed throughout the night, at dusk and dawn, and during the day they like to relax.
“They do that in the shallow, coastal waters where the waves and the white water provide oxygen for them, provide current so that they don’t have to swim as much, and they’re basically sunbathing there in optimum efficiency.”
"People need to treat the ocean like the wild, fluid environment it is," Riley Elliott says.
Elliott told the Herald while shark attacks were uncommon, people need to treat the ocean like the wild, fluid environment it is.
“We just think because it’s a holiday you can just go out there willy nilly and play in it.”
So are more sharks coming close to shore? What causes a shark to attack? And what can we do to reduce our risk of being injured by a shark in the ocean?
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Riley Elliott about shark activity in New Zealand waters and how swimmers can keep safe.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. This episode was presented by Katie Harris, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in social issues reporting who joined the Herald in 2020.
