Sharks are an important attraction for aquaria; however, larger species can rarely be kept indefinitely. To date, there has been little work tracking shark movements post-release to the wild. The authors used high-resolution biologgers to monitor a sub-adult tiger shark's pre- and post-release fine-scale movements following 2 years of captivity in an aquarium. They also compared its movement with that of a wild shark tagged nearby. Despite the differences in movement between the two sharks, with vertical oscillations notably absent and greater levels of turning seen from the released shark, the captive shark survived the release. These biologgers improve insight into post-release movements of captive sharks.
Keywords: Galeocerdo cuvier; Shark Bay; Western Australia; biologging; captivity; fine-scale telemetry.
© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Fish Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Fisheries Society of the British Isles.