The Gold Coast is home to many species of sharks including the amazing hammerhead (Sphyrnidae). This species is remarkable in sensory adaptation and behaviour, without 600 sensory systems per side and a head designed to detect hidden prey! This shark is also known to be highly social and often seen in large schools during the day.
At night, they move from the coastlines and head into deeper water in the open ocean, diving to 1200 m! When the sun rises, they return back to their home range area next to the coast.
In this project have have tagged multiple adult Great (S. mokarran) and Scalloped (S. lewini) hammerhead sharks off the coast and are nearing their one year data collection cycle. This information will tell us what they have been doing and how we can use that to conserve and manage hammerhead sharks with urbanisation in Australia.
We have also found juvenile pupping grounds and have been tagging and following young hammerheads in their home grounds to discover their how they use these areas!
They are very cute when they are young, but the information that we collect in this work is vital to their existence in urbanised areas. Coming this Summer, will be tagging more juvenile hammerheads telling us habitat types and behaviours of these young oddly shaped sharked.