ABSTRACT: Investigations of shark habitat use and foraging ecology have been hampered by inaccuracies inherent in many current methods. Although catch rates and acoustic telemetry may be appropriate for studying habitat use at a broad geographic scale, they are often not adequate for fine-scale determination of habitat use. Also, these techniques cannot provide data on how sharks behave in different habitats or on feeding behavior or social interactions. In this paper, we present a method that allows analysis of shark habitat use using an attached underwater video camera with an integrated time-depth recorder ('Crittercam'), which provides accurate, and continuous habitat use data on a fine geographic scale, as well as a record of shark behavior. Deployments on tiger sharks that were tracked simultaneously (n = 22) show that habitat use estimates of individual sharks may differ between Crittercam and acoustic tracking data. However, average habitat use measured by acoustic tracking may be accurate if sample sizes are large.

KEY WORDS: Acoustic telemetry · Habitat use · Sharks · Behavior · Ecology

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Published in MEPS Vol. 209 (2001) on January 5
ISSN: 0171-8630. Copyright © Inter-Research, Oldendorf/Luhe, 2001