harmonix1234
Eats Squid
Could it be that there is less fish in the Ocean?Im still interested to find out the original question of why all of a sudden these great white attacks are occurring, im not going to start arguments about little details etc, but the original question was why these attacks all of a sudden started?
It could be lots of things.
A few years back there was an unusually warm winter/spring in the Antarctic region and thousnads and thousands of seals and penguins couldn't get their normal feed of fish and so they persihed on the beaches and rocks, and didn't breed.
Lots less seals and penguins also means lots less shark food close to home.
Another thing is, a mate of mine who is head skipper for huon aquaculture (Huon Salmon) says that they have noticed a lot of seals from right up the North of Tassie that usually live up there year round are moving down here to the Derwent river (about 300kms south of their usual home) to come and eat the salmon in the nets and breed down here because it's a reliable source of food.
Clever little buggers. They are now permanent residents, which also means that the sharks up in the bass Straight aren;t getting access to their usual seal tucka.
Huon Salmon have tagged and relocated a few dozen of them back up to the North of the state to their normal home turf and within a few weeks they are back.
In 30 years of salmon farming this is something he has only seen happen in the last two or three years.
Just recently, they had a big hole in the net that the seals had created and the diver went down to patch it up and there was a juvenile great white in there also having at the free salmon. They had to catch him and release him elsewhere as well.
First time they have ever had a GW in the nets. This was only last week.
I guess the salmon attracts all kinds of stuff and is always going to be a magnet to hungry predators, but the fact that this new behaviour in seals and first noted, and first 'reported' GW sighting in the nets makes me wonder how much is coincidence, how much is clever seals taking 30 years to work out how to get a free feed and pass that knowldege of food spots down to their pups, and how much is behavioural changes across the top end of the marine ecosystem due to overfishing?
Last edited: