Variation in depth of whitetip reef sharks: does provisioning ecotourism change their behaviour?

By Richard Fitzpatrick, K. Abrantes, J. Seymour, A. Barnett. Coral reefs, 2011

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the dive tourism industry, shark provisioning has become increasingly popular in many places around the world. It is therefore important to determine the impacts that provisioning may have on shark behaviour. In this study, eight adult whitetip reef sharks Triaenodon obesus were tagged with time-depth recorders at Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea, Australia. Tags collected time and depth data every 30 s. The absolute change in depth over 5-min blocks was considered as a proxy for vertical activity level. Daily variations in vertical activity levels were analysed to determine the effects of time of day on whitetip reef shark behaviour. This was done for days when dive boats were absent from the area, and for days when dive boats were present, conducting shark provisioning. Vertical activity levels varied between day and night, and with the presence of boats. In natural conditions (no boats present), sharks remained at more constant depths during the day, while at night animals continuously moved up and down the water column, showing that whitetip reef sharks are nocturnally active. When boats were present, however, there were also long periods of vertical activity during the day. If resting periods during the day are important for energy budgets, then shark provisioning may affect their health. So, if this behaviour alteration occurs frequently, e.g., daily, this has the potential to have significant negative effects on the animals’ metabolic rates, net energy gain and overall health, reproduction and fitness.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fa1a0d5dfa03dcad0cc43a177e205bdf133a3055

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Citations in the corpus

Shark and ray provisioning: functional insights into behavioral, ecological and physiological responses across multiple scales (2015, background): “Aggregations of naturally sociable blacktip Carcha - rhinus melanopterus (Mourier et al. 2012) or whitetip Triaenodon obesus (Fitzpatrick et al. 2011) reef sharks and silky sharks Carcharhinus falciformis (Clarke et al. 2011) are described in the literature.”
Don't bite the hand that feeds: assessing ecological impacts of provisioning ecotourism on an apex marine predator (2012, background): “Lastly, Fitzpatrick et al. (2011) examined diel vertical behaviour of Triaenodon obesus (whitetip reef sharks) in response to regular ecotourism and found evidence for alterations in habitat use associated with the presence of boats conducting provisioning.”
Heat-seeking sharks: support for behavioural thermoregulation in reef sharks (2012, background): “…from coastal electrical plants (Vaudo & Lowe 2006), ocean farming (Papastamatiou et al. 238 Speed et al.: Behavioural thermoregulation in reef sharks 2010) and food provisioning by ecotourism operators (Laroche et al. 2007, Semeniuk & Rothley 2008, Clua et al. 2010, Fitzpatrick et al. 2011).”