This is the second of my 2024 reports on detections of tagged sharks by our listening station off Stanwell Park. Most detection notifications supply the date and location the shark was first tagged and the date and location of the previous detection to Stanwell Park so we get a good sense of where our visitors travel from and how long they have been around.

For the white sharks they were first tagged as far south as Merimbula north to Ballina and their last detection prior to Stanwell Park was almost as equally wide, being Sussex Inlet to Lennox Head.

Stanwell Park was visited by 26 different white sharks in 23/24, the vast majority only visited once. Shark #1901 visited 10 times between mid-July to mid-August 2023 and is the clear winner of our most frequent visitor award for 23/24. No white sharks detected in 23/24 were detected in 22/23.

This was not the case for the bull sharks. Shark #795 was not only well travelled – having been first tagged in the Whitsundays – but it visited Stanwell Park 7 times from early February to late March 2024. Unlike white shark #1901 which was not picked up by any other receiver prior to its regular visits to Stanwell Park, bullshark #795 seemed to be  City commuter, being picked up off Manly, Bondi and Maroubra prior to Stanwell Park. The other interesting thing about #795 is that it is the only shark that has visited twice in two years and gets our inaugural frequent, multi-year visitor award.

White sharks were more commonly detected between 4am and noon, bullsharks between 8pm and midnight. Bullshark visit times were similar to last year, but this was not the case for the white sharks which were slightly more common in the afternoons than this year.

Watch Duncan’s snorkelling videos on his YouTube channel, Illawarra Underwater