The surfing population of Western Australia has the dubious record of being the hardest hit by shark attacks anywhere on the planet in the last two years with six people having died in that time. Scientists in Western Australia have figured out a way to have an early warning system in place for surfers in the area by having the sharks tweet when they get too close to shore.
The sharks, of course, lack the opposable digits to bash out the 140 character missives on their own, so scientists have outfitted them with electronic transmitters that activate when the shark closes within roughly 1km of the shore. A tweet is then sent with the shark details including the size, breed and approximate location of the shark. the tweets are sent from the ‘Surf Life Saving WA‘ Twitter account which already posts sighting from other vessels including the rescue helicopters in the area. The tweets look like the one below:
Fisheries advise: tagged Bronze whaler shark detected at Meelup receiver at 04:27:00 AM on 5-Jan-2014
— Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) January 4, 2014
The initiative is one that could be emulated in similarly shark active areas in South Africa such as Fishoek which had its latest shark attack as recently as last month. We don’t know for sure yet how the 320+ sharks that are already hooked up to the system feel about being on Twitter although once they discover how to post selfies on Instagram we think they’ll get into it.
[Image – Terry Goss]
