A public consultation document was released at a Press Conference in Georgetown, where deputy director of the Environment Department, Tim Austin, and project placement research officer Lizy Gardner described the project findings to press and TV.  They also explained how stakeholders could express their views on the research finding and conservation recommendations; by returning a paper copy of a feedback form, or by completing a questionnaire on line.  You can find (and download) the public consultation document at http://www.doe.ky/ wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Shark_Research_Report_as_of_14_August_2012.pdf, and you can view or complete the feedback questionnaire at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZL5X5SP.

The project is jointly funded by the UK Government Overseas Territories Environment Programme, the Save Our Seas Foundation and Caybrew of the Cayman Islands. 

Speaking of Tina the Tiger Shark, our three tigers were satellite tagged (so that we could track their movements) a whole year ago now. Since then they have roamed the western Caribbean, but two of the three, Coco and Luiza, have recently headed back to Grand Cayman. You can check out their tracks on our Cayman tiger tracking webpage, http://www.nova.edu/~johnmatt/tigergrandcayman_full.htm where, you will see just how far they travelled. Our two Cayman tagged oceanic white tip sharks, Stella and Chris, have also been covering great distances in the same region, as you can also see on a linked page to the site.

Given the effort behind this work, we are glad to see that public opinion about sharks has begun to change here. When tiger sharks were killed in Grand Cayman about three years ago, the event was highlighted in the newspaper as a threat removed. This summer, a sponsored long distance swim between Grand Cayman and Little Cayman was marred by the accompanying team killing oceanic white tips. The public outcry against this was huge and showed a positive shift in feeling for sharks, as you can see by joining our Facebook group “Sharks & Cetaceans: the Cayman Islands”. There is still plenty to do, however, to sustain this change, as is evident from the project’s recent work with the southern stingrays at the famous Stingray City diving and snorkelling sites on Grand Cayman.

This is a famous but artificial aggregation of stingrays, the result of being fed for many years by tourists, who thus enjoy close encounters with them. The experience has an amazing effect on people, who then begin to appreciate what stingrays are, and that they are not vicious killers as suggested by the unfortunate death of the Australian celebrity Steve Erwin. However it seems the number of stingrays at Stingray City has reduced in recent years, for which the tour operators are inclined to blame sharks or even a lone male bottlenose dolphin that has taken up residence in the area. In response we began a monitoring study last year and Jane, our project volunteer, has been out collecting data to help shed some light on what might be affecting the stingray population.

We will also be checking on our tiger sharks at sea, and hopefully catching one or two more to release with new satellite tags. But the main task for the next few months will be assessing our results to date and drafting recommendations for the Cayman Government on how best to manage and conserve the island’s sharks and dolphins, in order to benefit both the environment and the people of the Caymans. This is not as much fun as tagging tiger sharks, or dressing up as one, but it is key to there being not just tiger sharks, but rays and reef fish too, in the years to come.

Mauvis Gore

We spent much time trying to catch a great hammerhead and tiger shark at a number of locations and times of day around Stingray City. Finally, we had success in December 2010. There was great relief to have caught Tina and then Luiza, both female tiger sharks by the North Sound and admiration at how stunning the tiger shark is. Both sharks were very relaxed while we applied a SPOT tag to their dorsal fins and swam off afterwards. Then came the wait to see if they would surface to allow the signal from their tags to reach the satellite. Luckily, we had our first location signaled from Tina the next day. She and Luiza have been around the North Sound for a few months, generally keeping out of the way of Stingray City and coming up to the surface at night and outside of the reef.

The North Sound is an area heavily used by tourists, fishers and is a main area for boat traffic. Understanding the movement and use of areas of the North Sound by Tina and Luiza will allow us to discuss with the community what they might expect from tiger sharks and how to accommodate both the sharks and people. This is exciting news from the sharks that will feed into our Positive Shark Campaign for the Cayman Islands!

That we have picked up signals from Tina’s tag this soon is actually a big but welcome surprise.  The more commonly used pop-off satellite tags, such as we have used on basking shark, only reveal their position when months later they come off the shark and float to the surface.  However thanks to our collaboration with the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation the tag we kitted out Tina with is a SPOT tag that actually detects its position by GPS whenever the tag’s aerial emerges above the surface of the ocean.  Not just emerges above the surface, but stays there long enough for the aerial to dry off and the tag to detect the GPS satellite network and calculate its position. So indeed Tina has been on top of the ocean, with fin exposed, for perhaps a minute or two, on at least three occasions! One likely explanation is that she has been entering shallow water to search for prey such as the rays and turtles on which they often feed.

What will she do next - we wait with baited breath!

The acoustic tag (or pinger) should allow us to detect when she is present at any of our study sites.  The satellite tag is a SPOT tag that will report her position whenever she breaks the surface for long enough for the GPS to function. It seems from the work of colleagues that some Caribbean tiger sharks may make regular long-distance journeys.  We can’t wait to see if she spends all year in the Caymans or is just a seasonal visitor!

Nevertheless the data have slowly accumulated and we have taken recent enforced time on land to bring our analyses up to date.  At last some clear patterns are emerging.  This was more than useful when it came this morning to a 45 minute presentation to the Department of Environment staff.  Perhaps most interesting are the differences in shark densities and numbers of species between the islands.  Little Cayman seems to come out top, which raises the question of why densities on Grand Cayman are so low. Also noticeable are the range of cetacean species for which we now have reliable sightings, including bother killer whales (Orca) and false killers on the one hand, and Pygmy Sperm Whales and species of rare beaked whales on the other.

Now with the general picture emerging we need to start work on a couple of more experimental studies.  Back in May we made some unsuccessful efforts to catch one or more of the few tiger and giant hammerhead sharks that we think are around. Come this weekend we plan another go, in order to tag these animals with acoustic and satellite tags.  And we need to study the possible effects of divers feeding sharks.  We have a public talk to one of the local communities planned for next Monday, when doubtless one or two of these issues will come up. The tiger sharks sound scary, but the public meeting may be scarier!

Even more pleasing, a week or so ago we managed to catch and tag 4 or 5 Caribbean Reef Sharks, the most active and striking of the local species.  As well as attaching numbered tags to the dorsal fins, we were able to insert into the belly small individually identifiable acoustic tags or pingers.  And – the good news – having in the past few days been restricted by the weather to the same sites, we were able to detect using our mobile acoustic receiver, 3 of these individuals still active in much the same area as where they were tagged.  Their locations and movements seem to support the view that during at least this part of the year individuals restrict themselves to relatively limited home ranges covering perhaps only a few km of reef.  As well as the mobile receiver there are networks of fixed acoustic receivers around each of the islands, and the expectation is that these will reveal just how far the tagged individuals are prepared to roam. Watch this space!