Remember this post?
That was not the only observation by far.
This never before described novel hunting technique probably started as an attempt by a single innovative Giant Trevally, only to be quickly adopted by the the whole gang of miscreants. At its apex in late 2011, the 15m Take-out had become a veritable gauntlet, with dozens of GTs targeting the Sharksuckers whenever a Bull would come in for a feed. The Trevallies would wait in front of the feeder and then follow the Shark throughout the feeding area, only to then return to the starting point in order to intercept the next approaching Bull.
Of interest, not all caught Sharksuckers would perish as some would manage to latch on to the attacker, only to then jump back onto a passing Bull Shark - click on the the pic at the top.
It however all ended at year end.
When the Bulls get ready for pupping and mating and are less interested in our bait, we relocate the feed to 25m where the topography is completely different and the trajectory of the feeding Bulls is much less predictable. And then most of the Bulls leave for 4-5 weeks, and the few who remain feed way less, thus further greatly reducing the predation opportunities of the GTs.
Whether it was the above and the Trevallies lost interest, or whether the individual Sharksucker-hunting GTs moved away or were fished: the fact is that we've never witnessed that behavior again.
But we had plenty of footage.
Here's a quick-&-dirty little iMovie edit of some memorable moments. Yeah I know the slo-mo kinda sucks - but you get the gist and I promise that I'll post something better later on.
And now Juerg has also written the paper - finally!
On top of the above story, it also describes other really interesting observations of Sharksuckers at Shark Reef and other Shark provisioning sites in Fiji.
Enjoy Juerg's paper!
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