- Title
- Coexisting with sharks: a novel, socially acceptable and non-lethal shark mitigation approach
- Creator
- Adams, Kye R.; Gibbs, Leah; Knott, Nathan A.; Broad, Allison; Hing, Martin; Taylor, Matthew D.; Davis, Andrew R.
- Relation
- Scientific Reports Vol. 10, Issue 1, no. 17497
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74270-y
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Conflict between humans and large predators is a longstanding challenge that can present negative consequences for humans and wildlife. Sharks have a global distribution and are considered to pose a potential threat to humans; concurrently many shark species are themselves threatened. Developing strategies for coexistence between humans and this keystone group is imperative. We assess blimp surveillance as a technique to simply and effectively reduce shark encounters at ocean beaches and determine the social acceptance of this technique as compared to an established mitigation strategy-shark meshing. We demonstrate the suitability of blimps for risk mitigation, with detection probabilities of shark analogues by professional lifeguards of 0.93 in ideal swimming conditions. Social surveys indicate strong social acceptance of blimps and preference for non-lethal shark mitigation. We show that continuous aerial surveillance can provide a measurable reduction in risk from sharks, improving beach safety and facilitating coexistence between people and wildlife.
- Subject
- conservation biology; environmental impact; human behaviour; psychology and behaviour; sustainability
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1430344
- Identifier
- uon:38826
- Identifier
- ISSN:2045-2322
- Rights
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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