Scalloped hammerhead sharks.
A UWA research fellow is asking citizen scientists to document endangered hammerhead sharks to help protect the species.
Dr Naima Andrea López completed her PhD on the critically endangered scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini).
Scalloped hammerheads typically inhabit the tropical region of Australia and have been rarely recorded south of Jurien Bay but, since 2011, there have been recurrent sightings within Perth metropolitan waters.
Dr López has spent many hours flying a drone in the Shoalwater Islands Marine Park and discovered there was a lot of excitement in the Rockingham community about the hammerheads.
“These sharks are very charismatic, and people like to swim with them and take pictures,” Dr López said.
“People are regularly sending me footage, asking questions and wanting to know how the sharks can be protected.”
Dr López saw the interaction with the public as an opportunity to support long-term monitoring of the species, which in turn can help inform management and conservation.
“I want to create a citizen science app where we consolidate all the information that we have about hammerheads in Australia and in particular here in WA,” she said.
“We will provide guidelines of what type of images we need for science because they have to be taken in a particular way to be useful.”
Dr López has noticed a decline in the visiting population since she began monitoring hammerheads in 2019 and feedback from the community suggests the same.
“We don’t know if we are seeing fewer numbers at the aggregation site because the sharks are being fished, or if we are seeing fewer numbers because the sharks are using other areas,” she said.
