The Best Shark Dive in the World!: Great Fiji Shark Count

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Great Fiji Shark Count - a Message from Helen!

Helen Sykes our irreducible GFSC manager has just issued the following statistics - click on the pictures for detail!

Results of Three Years of the Great Fiji Shark Count

April 2015

Over the past three years, dive operators across the Fiji Islands and their diving and snorkeling guests have been recording their Shark, Ray and Turtle sightings over the months of April and November. Thanks to those dedicated divers, we now have some interesting facts to share about Shark populations in Fiji.

The data is analyzed by the number of Shark/Ray/Turtle sightings recorded on every dive by every diver who takes part. This is called number of sightings per observation. Because there are usually many divers on each dive, we have thousands of observations every month.

We have separated dives where feeding was carried out from those where no feeding was done.

From a very enthusiastic start in April 2012, the number of participating dive operators has dropped to our reliable core team, representing operators on Viti Levu, Beqa, Taveuni, Vanua Levu, the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands, and the Lomai Viti / Vatu-i-Ra area. We'd like to thank those operators who have stuck by this project and worked hard to get the data to us in a useful format!

Even though the number of dive operators has decreased, the number of dives and of observations (every diver who takes part makes one observation per dive) has remained in the thousands, with the highest total of 4,278 observations in November 2013.

Highlights:

There have been some unexpected and exciting sightings recorded over the past three years.

Guitarfish, previously very rarely recorded in Fiji, have been regularly seen on sites along the Coral Coast.
A Leatherback Turtle was seen during a dive (a very rare occurrence) in the Yasawas in November 2014
Schooling Hammerheads have been regularly recorded on a dive site on the South Coast of Vanua Levu
Mobula Rays have been recorded in the Pacific Harbour/ Beqa region and also in Namena, south of Vanua Levu
Tahitian Rays (Himantura fai) were recorded in the Yasawas
Hammerheads and Guitarfish have only been recorded on non-feeding dives
Rays and Turtles are more common on non-feed dives than on baited feeding dives
The most common sharks seen on baited feeding dives are Bull, White Tip Reef, Grey, and Black Tip Reef Sharks
Some sharks species, including Bull, Grey Reef and possibly White-tip Reef Sharks, exhibit seasonal patterns of higher and lower numbers, which are probably related to breeding behaviour.
So far no significant decrease in coastal shark populations has been seen, good news for those of us fearing that shark-fin fishing was continuing to damage shark stocks, but we can only confirm this one way or the other by continuing these surveys over the long term

Non-Feeding Dives:

Over the years, across Fiji, divers have seen an average of 1.22 to 2.03 Sharks on every dive, plus one Ray and one Turtle every 5 to 10 dives. Shark sightings varied year by year, but the general trend appears stable or slightly increasing. Ray and Turtle sightings appear to be very stable.

Baited Dives:

You, our Contributors!

Continuity of data is vital if we are to make our case for Shark Conservation, and we'd like to recognise and thank our contributors, especially those who have been with us from the start, and continued every six months. Others have joined us recently, and are welcomed to the ranks.

Here is our honour list:

Six Counts