Very nice!
Check this out!
No need to write a synopsis as it is open source and also, because there are really nice ones here and here. Great to see that this is once again brilliant research that has been facilitated by Marine Dynamics, a proud member of Global Shark Diving!
And the take-away message of it all?
What once again strikes me, is how behavior is being
mediated by the environment (= climate, geography, habitat but also
occurrence and/or migration of prey etc) but also by factors like
gender, age and of course, individuality - and this all within one and
the same species!
And yes I'm very much repeating myself!
Incidentally, that's what we very much experience here.
We basically conduct two types of feeding, i.e. by hand and from a suspended wheelie bin - and over the years, we have observed that each feeding modality has created its own Shark tribe, with only extremely few individuals switching from one source to the other. In fact, when we briefly discontinued hand feeding after the passing of Rusi, some of the hand feeders appear to have wandered away, only to slowly start coming back once regular hand feeding was resumed.
Maybe individual Sharks learn a preferred strategy early on and then continue favoring it as long as it works, which would also explain why some of the cage dive operators report that the same individual GWS appear to attack the teaser baits always in the same way.
But of course all is relative.
These are trends and not absolutes, meaning that in all likelihood, behavior happens along a continuum and very likely also evolves as prey wisen up and circumstances changes. Plus, Sharks with wide trophic niches are also likely to dispose of an equally wide array of predation strategies.
But I'm digressing as always.
Great paper, and well done to everybody involved!
