Acoustic and conventional tagging support the growth patterns of grey nurse sharks and reveal their large-scale displacements in the west coast of Australia

Abstract

The grey nurse shark, Carcharias taurus, is a globally vulnerable coastal species with aggregatory behaviour and low productivity, making it highly susceptible to overfishing. Little is known on the biology and movement for the population along the west coast of Australia. Here we use acoustic telemetry to show that C. taurus can undertake large-scale movements and potentially capitalise on seasonal prey aggregations. Conventional tagging provided evidence to support the growth parameter values used to represent the species’ growth dynamics and considerably extended the species’ maximum observed age. As maximum age is a proxy for productivity, our findings directly inform the recovery plan currently in place for Australian C. taurus.