SharkTagger.org

Happy New Year everyone! We took some time off social media over the break to reflect on 2025 & our goals for 2026!

Some highlights of 2025:

* We pulled our acoustic receiver array from the FADs around Oahu & Big Island & downloaded silky & oceanic whitetip detection data to wrap up the acoustic telemetry component of the HCTP after 6 years of monitoring! Huge mahalo to for assisting us!

* We conducted shark depredation mitigation trials in Kona by testing three new technologies on the market; Fishtek Sharkguard, RPLEX, and Sharkstopper. We found the electric deterrents to be more effective than the acoustic deterrent. This pilot study is a great starting point to address this extremely important issue for Hawaii small-boat fishers.

* We published the manuscript “Using photo identification to assess demographics & fishery interactions of oceanic whitetip sharks in the main Hawaiian Islands”. A huge mahalo to everyone who submits their oceanic whitetip shark imagery, without your continued collaboration none of this would be possible! (Link in bio for anyone who wants access to the paper)

*We continued amassing photo ID data. We have now uniquely identified 459 individual oceanic whitetip sharks based on their dorsal fin patterns around the main Hawaiian Islands (Kona; n = 439, Oahu; n = 16, Molokai; n = 1, Maui; n = 1, Kau’ai; n = 2). Of these 289 are female, 135 are male & 35 are unidentified s*x.

There is SO much to look forward to in 2026:

* Presenting the results of our depredation trials at the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WestPac) Shark Depredation workshop in  Honolulu in February & at the WestPac Council Meeting later on in the year.

* And finally analyzing and writing up the depredation study and oceanic whitetip and silky shark FAD association around Hawaii!!

As always we are so grateful to the community that has supported the work to understand the drivers of shark-fishery interactions as we continue to search for solutions.

🤙🏾🦈

Detecting and monitoring retained and bycatch species caught in the Hawaii longline fishery is one of the main goals of our NOAA Fisheries colleagues Jenny and Josh. Their Electronic Monitoring (EM) team has been making awesome progress lately on their Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and  excitingly, they have finally been able to add sharks as a new addition to the model! 

Model performance metrics and testing of raw video footage through the algorithm demonstrates some great potential for the model, although some enhancements are needed to reduce false positives and missed sharks.  

We are excited about EM paired with AI as a tool to monitor sharks incidentally caught by fishing vessels with the potential to expand coverage to fishing fleets with limited or no monitoring.