Photos & Videos

Sunset on Shark Bay

Photos and Videos

The photos and videos on this site are meant to be used for educational purposes so feel free to download them and use them! If you need high-res images or videos, or for non-educational uses please contact us. On the right you will find a series of video vignettes of our research, many of which also are found on our research pages. Most of these videos can be played and paused. Move your pointer over a video for the controls to appear. For galleries of photos that can be downloaded click here.

Introductory and Research Videos

Find out how SBERP studies tiger sharks. You'll see how we catch, tag, sample, and track the sharks. (2009)

Natural History Videos

Small sharks, especially nervous sharks (pictured here), can often be seen in the extreme shallows of Shark Bay.

A giant shovelnose ray and a reticulate whipray crusie the shallows.

Unlike many sharks, which must swim constantly to breathe, rays, like this shovelnose ray, can pump water across their gills while they are stationary using their spiracles.

A reticulate whipray forages in the shallows next to a small shovelnose ray and attracts a school of hardyheads looking for a meal.

A soldier crab burries itself in the sand.

Soldier crabs move across a shallow intertidal area onto shore and two fight over a burrow.

An olive headed sea snake prepares to eat a cobbler.

A large snail called a baler cruises the shallows of Shark Bay looking for a meal to inhale.

A pied cormorant takes flight. Cormorants have to change the habitats that they use in order to avoid encounters with tiger sharks (2009).

The fringing mangroves of Shark Bay provide some refuge for a variety of fish species, but it does not appear that they provide very much food.

Classic Videos

For his research, Jeremy Vaudo has to capture rays. In this early video you can see the "strike netting" technique. This allows Jeremy to catch exactly the individual he wants. It is much more selective than fishing methods and allows him to catch many more rays. (2004)

National Geographic's Crittercam - an Animal-borne Video and Environmental Data (AVED) system - helped SBERP researchers determine that tiger sharks prefer to spend their time in shallow waters and that they don't expend a lot of energy chasing after potential prey. (2004)

Before you can study sea turtles you have to catch them. This video shows how we do it. Check back later for an updated version. (2004)

In 2004, SBERP teamed up with the Department of Environment and Conservation and the Yadgalah Aboriginal Corporation to put sattelite tags on loggerhead sea turtles. This work is now being continued by MS student Erica Olsen (SFU). Check back later for a fresh new video of our satellite tagging project! (2004)

Green turtle - Loggerhead turtle

Using National Geographic's Crittercam we began investigating why green and loggerhead turtles seem to experience such different rates of tiger shark attack. These videos show one possible reason - even when they dive for about the same amount of time, loggerhead turtles spend much more time at the surface breathing. This is a bad place to be when a tiger shark might surprise you from below. Loggerhead turtles can't spend less time at the surface because they are less efficient breathers than green turtles. Doctoral student Jordy Thomson (SFU) is continuing this work using time depth recorders. (2004)