Researcher finds pregnant sharks love Rainbow Beach

Last Update: Friday, September 28, 2007. 8:11am AEST
By Nicole Bond & Jodie van de Wetering

Beach lovers know to swim between the flags and watch out for jellyfish, but holiday makers on the Fraser Coast may be unaware that they share the ocean with the elusive and endangered Grey Nurse Shark. Not a threat to humans unless provoked, in the past the Grey Nurse was hunted for its unearned reputation as a man-killer. Researchers estimate there are now just 500 of these sharks left on the east coast of Australia, and efforts are underway to protect them.

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service officer Carley Bansemer is researching her PhD thesis on the Grey Nurse Shark, Carcharias taurus. One of her main research sites is Wolf Rock, off Rainhow Beach, one of 14 known gathering sites for the critically endangered sharks on the east coast of Australia. At some times of the year, up to 40 female Grey Nurses call Wolf Rock home.

The research project attached coded transmitters to four female sharks, and then tracked their movements with a series of 'listening stations' positioned on the ocean floor around Wolf Rock, which picked up signals from the individual sharks' transmitters. The sharks were monitored 24 hours a day for a fortnight during February 2007.

This month Carley Bansemer returned to Wolf Rock, and found a group of at least 40 pregnant Grey Nurse Sharks. Grey Nurses are ovo-viviparous, meaning their eggs hatch inside the mother's body, and the young continue to develop inside the uterus.

The aim of the research is to determine the value of Wolf Rock and other sites where the sharks gather, particularly if female sharks gather at the site during pregnancy. The Burnett Mary Regional Group for Natural Resource Management co-funded the research, and said it hopes to become more involved with university studies into the region's unique and threatened or endangered species.

BMRG chief executive officer, David Brown, said the results of the project are still being analysed but it plays a role in helping understand the biodiversity of the region. "At the moment this particular piece of research is for Carley Bansemer's PhD thesis that she's doing at the University of Queensland, and hopefully there'll be opportunities to do similar research with the university and other universities with critically endangered species."