Wetpixel

Paper investigates metabolic cost of cage diving

Sharks on Wetpixel

A paper published in the journal Conservation Physiology reports on the metabolic cost of human:shark interactions. High frequency 3-axis acceleration loggers were attached to 10 white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at the Neptune Islands, South Australia.

These showed an increase in strong accelerations and vertical movements when sharks were interacting with cage-diving operators. This would suggest that interacting with cage divers has a high metabolic cost for the sharks, although this is tempered by the relative infrequency of these interactions.