Climate Shifts » Blog Archive » Hungry tiger shark eats reefcam

Home » Otherside

(8 votes, average: 4.38 out of 5)

Loading ...

Hungry tiger shark eats reefcam

7 February 2010 Posted by J.Roff 9,048 views 5 Comments

I stumbled across today over at Sea Fever blog, and thought was worth re-posting here. First, a bit of background from the Australian Institute of Marine Science on exactly how they managed to get a tiger shark to eat their camera:

Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) have been developed by AIMS scientists in order to monitor the vast areas of deeper inter-reef and shelf habitats inaccessible to research divers so that important bioregions there can be included in marine protected areas.

BRUVS consist of tourist-grade “HandiCam” video cameras in simple underwater housings made of PVC sewer pipe and acrylic, with a canister of minced pilchards on the end of a bait arm in the field of view. The housings are held in steel frames, and are deployed in strings of four to six under separate ropes and floats, to be picked up after one or two hours filming at the seabed.

Baited videos record species attracted to the bait plume or camera station, species attracted to the commotion caused by feeding and aggregation at the station, species occupying territories within the field of view of the camera, and species indifferent to the station but present in or passing through the field of view during the deployment.

The range of fish, sharks, rays, sea snakes and other animals sighted on BRUVS tapes has been remarkable – over 300 species to date, from 3cm leatherjackets to 3m hammerhead sharks.

J.Roff is a PhD student at the Centre for Marine Studies, University of Queensland. His research is focused on the inshore Great Barrier Reef, with broader interests in coral bleaching, coral ecology and the emerging field of coral disease. Jez is responsible for the ‘behind the scenes’ work at Climate Shifts, editing WordPress themes, general HTML and database upkeep.
Email this author | View all posts by J.Roff

5 Comments »

Sharks and Reef Fish Trash Baited Camera | Deep Sea News said:

[...] Climate Shifts this morning I discovered this video which enamored me for two and a half minutes. You have to go [...]

# 7 February 2010 at 8:11 am

Peter A. Mello said:

Thanks for posting this. I originally discovered the video via Twitter but was really interested to learn more about how it was taken. You post is great and I’ve updated mine linking back here. Love what you’re doing with Climate Shifts! I’ve also added you to Sea-Fever’s Internet Ports of Call. Keep up the great work!

# 7 February 2010 at 9:00 am

Law of Attraction - Baited Cams - Scuba Blogs - ScubaSpotz said:

[...] 2006 (2)June 2006 (2)May 2006 (1)December 2005 (1) Currently being passed around the blue blogs some interesting research video from Australia:Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) have [...]

# 7 February 2010 at 10:59 am

Shark eats video camera said:

[...] Back story [...]

# 8 February 2010 at 4:07 am