Meeting Abstract

94.3  Wednesday, Jan. 7  A comparison of spatial and temporal habitat use by male and female migrating Great White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the eastern Pacific CHAPPLE, T.K.*; JORGENSEN, S.J.; ANDERSON, S.D.; VAN SOMMERAN, S.; KLIMLEY, A.P.; BOTSFORD, L.W.; BLOCK, B.A.; Univerisity of California, Davis; Stanford University; Inverness, CA; Pelagic Shark Research Foundation; University of California, Davis; University of California, Davis; Stanford University tkchapple@ucdavis.edu

Current advances in electronic tagging technology have provided information regarding marine animal movements and behavior that can be used to estimate population size. Recent work with pop-off archival tags has revealed large scale movements of Great White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) during yearly migrations between coastal and pelagic habitats (Boustany et al. 2002; Bonfil et al. 2005). However, constraints on the precision of location estimates from these tags preclude information regarding fine scale movements. Therefore, we have placed acoustic tags on white sharks off of California and deployed acoustic receivers to collect more localized movement data. A combination of these two tagging technologies has given us a more complete understanding of white shark movements. Our data show sex specific patterns, both temporally and spatially, during their seasonal migrations. Here we analyze the behavior of these sharks in both time and space to determine the probability of capture of individuals. These probabilities are critical components for population estimates and overall assessments of white sharks.