Sharks take to social media in Australia

The Western Australia Department of Fisheries reports that it is continuing to roll out its Shark Monitoring Network and has deployed two new satellite-linked tagged shark monitors. Shark Monitoring Network project manager Mark Kleeman said the network now had deployed 23 satellite-linked monitors.

“Along with the satellite-linked monitors, there are approximately 320 seabed monitors located throughout Western Australia that also monitor tagged sharks, and each time that data is physically retrieved it will help to establish a much broader snapshot for understanding shark behavior and movement,” he said. As of December, 338 sharks had been tagged.

When a tagged shark comes within range of a monitor, a message is generated over the Surf Life Saving Western Australia (SLSWA) Twitter feed at twitter.com/slswa. As Salon's Lindsay Abrams puts it, “Australia's sharks will now tweet before attacking.”

The monitoring network makes use of acoustic receivers and transmitters such as those from Vemco, a Canadian company whose products have been called “BlackBerrys for fish.”