Regional Population Connectivity, Oceanic Habitat, and Return Migration Revealed by Satellite Tagging of White Sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, at New Zealand Aggregation SitesDaily positions were estimated from ambient light data stored on WC PAT4 and Mk10 tags using WC-GPE: Global Position Estimator Program Suite software (www.wildlifecomputers.com). Dawn/dusk light-level data were extracted using WC-AMP, and daily longitudes and latitudes were estimated using WC-GPE. Daily records with poor dawn/dusk light level curves were excluded from the analyses. Microwave Telemetry provided estimated latitudes and longitudes for data from PTT 100 tags. The most probable tracks were fitted by matching tag-measured SST with remotely sensed SST data using unscented Kalman filtering (UKFSST) (Nielsen et al., 2006; Lam et al., 2008). Preliminary fits indicated that models incorporating longitude bias and SST bias always produced implausible tracks, so we omitted these parameters. For sharks whose tags popped up on the programmed date (n = 8), the UKFSST models incorporated parameters for latitude bias and solstice error variance (which accounts for greater error around the equinoxes), and the measurement error for the last position was set to zero. For sharks whose tags popped up prematurely or reported their first accurate location some time after pop-up (N = 11), the pop-up locations were not known accurately, so measurement error was estimated for the last position. For nine of these sharks, the UKFSST models incorporated parameters for latitude bias and solstice error variance; the remaining two sharks did not provide enough data to estimate the solstice error parameter, so uniform error was assumed.Twenty-five White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) were tagged with pop-up archival transmitting tags at Chatham Islands, Stewart Island, and one coastal location in New Zealand between April 2005 and September 2009.This project was funded by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd., the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, Wildlife Conservation Society NY, National Geographic Society, and NABU/SharkTrackerWhite sharks were tagged off Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands, New ZealandTwenty-five White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) were tagged with pop-up archival transmitting tags at Chatham Islands, Stewart Island, and one coastal location in New Zealand between April 2005 and September 2009.All but one shark were tagged free-swimming. White Sharks were attracted
with chum (minced Albacore) and lured close enough with fish baits to
tag. Tags were deployed using a hand-held tagging pole that inserted a
nylon umbrella-style dart (Domeier et al., 2005) into the dorsal
musculature of the shark. Three sharks were tagged with Microwave
Telemetry (MT) PTT100, and twenty-two were tagged with Wildlife
Computers (WC) PAT4 and MK10 pop-up archival transmitting (PAT) tags.
These were attached to the dart by a 23–25-cm leader of 2-mm diameter
(181.4-kg test) monofilament nylon. One shark (64035), a 330 cm total
length (TL) immature male, was caught using a baited line and secured in
a cradle. This shark was double tagged with a MT PAT tag and a WC smart
position and temperature (SPOT) satellite tag. The latter was bolted to
the shark’s first dorsal fin.Duffy, C.A.J.; Francis, M.P.; Manning, M.; Bonfil, R. (2012). Data from: Regional population connectivity, oceanic habitat, and return migration revealed by satellite tagging of white sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, at New Zealand aggregation sites. Southwestern OBIS, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand, 2014 records, Online https://nzobisipt.niwa.co.nz/resource?r=mbis_whiteshark released on May 26, 2014.
