More shark attacks occur in Western Australia than almost anyplace else on Earth. In order to help protect swimmers and surfers, the state government relies largely on helicopter-based spotters, plus members of the public who report their own sightings. Now, however, the Department of Fisheries has introduced a new system, in which the toothy fishes announce their own presence via Twitter.
Known as the Shark Monitoring Network, the system utilizes acoustic tags that are attached to the fins of individual sharks, along with buoyed monitoring devices that pick up the signals transmitted by those tags. When a tagged shark swims within range of one of the monitors, its species, size and location is automatically recorded.
That information is transmitted via satellite to a computer, which immediately posts it on Twitter. A tweet made just today reads, "Fisheries advise: tagged Bronze whaler shark detected at Garden Island (north end) receiver at 08:46:00 PM on 31-Dec-2013." By contrast, a fair amount of time can elapse between a sighting being made by a person, and that information being manually written up and shared via more traditional media.
So far the system utilizes 19 satellite-linked monitors, that keep track of 338 tagged sharks – species include great whites, tigers and bulls. Needless to say, there are still plenty of untagged sharks swimming near the beaches of Western Australia, plus the monitors don't cover every square kilometer of coastline. For that reason, the network is intended to augment existing spotting systems, not replace them.
The Department of Fisheries developed the network in partnership with Surf Life Saving Western Australia, which carries the tweets on its Twitter feed.
Source: Western Australia Department of Fisheries via Sky News
Why not reduce the need to gamble as there are more issue with the above technology and replace these with certainties.Or well 99 technology reliability certainties.
1 Combing a new Sunto style watch and ankle braclet into a shark stopper. While we await 24hr drone coverage on our beechs in the form of drone recovery lifeguards, faster then man and boat as they are arial.and in the form of arial deturent drones which use focus controled sound to send the fish backwards without hurting it of course of some other way ,numberous. We need to take matters in to our own hand.
Anti shark deturents have been around awhile untested unproven unreliable ? Maxium odds have to be carfuly instaled in to todays micro nano tec. A double approch on the wrist or wrists and ankles gives us a safe bubble zone,this sheild area of at least 50 to 30 metres makes certain we never even have to know our fish ^ freinds were even there.
These methods can be doubled up againts all land mamals also,phones are simply not an option,why is this,1 battery always on mode needs to be on because we as humans men and women have lost our tracker abilitys,animals will still always get the jump on 90 percent of humans except those few trained in such techqniues. By targeting animals senses ie the ears as this does the least damage,ie darts bullets spray,etc these are also methods that require calmness under treat of being eaten let alone death so the phycological factor is enormus.
Main test with dummys,in blood scattered waters This test proves that even when starving and in frezie mode the sharks will not over come the device
All other test focus on reliability ie battery warning mode before swim depth gps lost at sea becon,etc
Test 1 walk into a den of lions proving game over nature watch Test 2 swim with man eaters again futher proving nessiscary control over nature. I say nessicary due to our inevatble mastery over natrue, we as a speices will control all charchertisc of our world,solar system ,galaxy etc. Control of the food chain in a safe responsable way is step 1 step 2 the weather etc.
I accept your argument that there are other ways to deter sharks in a local area but I think you misunderstand the purpose of a program like this and how it came to be.
This program is really just an evolution of shark monitoring activities that have been going on for a long time in efforts to understand the behaviour of sharks and informing people so that they don't take unnecessary risks in areas that are known to have sharks.
It's not as if a pair of surfers were sitting around stoned on the beach saying "Dude, if every shark had a twitter account and told us where it was, then we could go surfing like whenever"
What we do know about sharks is that where you find one, you will generally find another because they are generally attracted to the same locations for feeding or breeding. This program therefore provides valuable information to community awareness of sharks.
To put everything in perspective though the average person in Australia is 100 times more likely to drown from being a poor swimmer, swimming in areas with rips/strong currents or being drunk while swimming than being the victim of a shark. The odds are even greater if you are not a regular surfer. Apologies to anyone who was really unlucky and attacked by a shark - I am arguing from statistics only.
The team behind this im just suggesting could have spent this time and money in the development of an always in the air solar survalence drone which would end the problem once and for all with the right torpedo heads of course attached.
By the way my spelling does indeed need more help then the great white shark.lol