Tagging success!
August 06, 2015 by dyertrust
Alison Towner
DICT Marine Biologist
It is now peak winter season here in the Western Cape. At this time of year we tend to get extreme cold fronts interspersed by one or two windless days followed by another cold front! On the morning of Tuesday 28th July, a 3m swell with very little wind provided us with a morning gap, so we grabbed the opportunity to launch our research boat Lwazi in an attempt to deploy our first round of R-code transmitters! To our joy we were able to successfully deploy tags on two individual sharks whilst we were anchored on a reef system west of Dyer Island called the Geldsteen.
The first shark to arrive was a 3.2m Female, who approached Lwazi very slowly making some really relaxed passes. Using a tagging pole we deployed the tag next to her dorsal fin, then she continued to circle us! Several white sharks paid us a visit that morning, the majority of which were sub adult males, under 3.5m TL. Next to arrive was a 4.1m male, also very relaxed. He made the perfect candidate for the deployment of our second tag, and just like the first shark, he came back to circle us with his tag in place! Subsequently, both sharks were seen days later at a couple of the cage diving boats. The boats have been excellent at letting us know if they see our tagged sharks. White Shark Projects were able to provide us some nice underwater images of our male shark.
We would like to extend a sincere thanks to the donors of each tag, Kelci + Thomao Reca and Kasim Kutay, clients of 
We look forward to deploying the rest of our tags over the next coming months and collecting their data on our listening stations for as long as possible. For more info on this project, including information on how to donate to our tagging please see our 
Contact Us: 0829075607
