Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Great Fiji Shark Count - April!


Here we go again!

Thanks to our partners, the GFSC enters its second year of existence.
Citizen scientists all over Fiji will be once again counting Sharks, Rays and Turtles during all of this April and then in November, meaning that we will for the first time be able to start comparing the data - albeit with great caveats especially considering that April 2012 was far from normal due to the incessant rain and the floods in the West. Remember that this is long-term monitoring, so any robust trends will only be discernible after several years!

Talking of which, here are last April's results.
This is a preliminary evaluation insofar as it was done by the Fiji team rather than the official lead researcher Christine who has been exceedingly busy - this very much also in co-authoring the all-important paper on the numbers! It offers a nice overview of activities and also firmly cements our area as Fiji's Shark diving hot spot, with more species and also larger numbers - yes obviously because of the feeding but also because of the good protection!


1 comment:

Tropical Selkie said...

What an awesome team! Good work by all the partners, sponsors, and citizen scientists.