Oral Presentation Australian Society for Fish Biology & Australian Freshwater Sciences Society Conference 2026

Can large marine protected areas protect wide-ranging neritic and pelagic sharks? (145059)

Andrea Asunsolo Rivera 1 2 , Katya Abrantes 1 2 , Andrew Hoey 2 , Charlie Huveneers 3 , Laurent Vigliola 4 , Paul A Butcher 5 , Jordan Matley 3 , Lauren Meyer 3 , Ingo Miller 1 2 , Nicolas Lubitz 1 2 , Gabriel Vianna 6 , Adam Barnett 1
  1. Biopixel Oceans Foundation, Cairns, QLD, 4878, Australia
  2. College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, 4878, Australia
  3. Southern Shark Ecology Group, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, 5001, Australia
  4. ENTROPIE, Institut de Recherche pour le Développment (IRD), Université de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, Université de la Réunion, CNRS, IFREMER, Nouméa, 98800, New Caledonia, France
  5. NSW Department of Primary Industries , National Marine Science Centre, PO Box 4321, Coffs Harbour , NSW, 2450, Australia
  6. Charles Darwin Research Station, Charles Darwin Foundation, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Large marine protected areas (L-MPAs) are proposed as tools to mitigate fisheries risk to sharks, but their effectiveness for protecting large migratory species remains poorly understood. Tiger shark movements across eastern Australia and adjacent Coral Sea have been well documented, but their use of current L-MPAs in this region is still unknown. To address this, we assessed tiger shark movements and space use across five adjacent L-MPAs that provide different protection levels, ranging from general-use-areas (sustainably managed) to fully-protected-areas: the Great Sandy Marine Park (GSMP), Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP), Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP), Coral Sea Natural Park (CSNP), and Norfolk Marine Park (NMP), totaling 1,643,567 km2. Sixty-eight tiger sharks (2.1–4.5 m total length) were equipped with fin-mounted satellite transmitters (Wildlife Computers SPOT5/6; mean tracking time = 254±16.4 SE; range:18-572 days) across Australia’s northeast coast, Norfolk Island, and New Caledonia. We quantified time spent in the different protection zones and identified areas of Area-Restricted-Search behaviour (ARS) using movement persistence models. We also identified predicted-foraging-areas using Autocorrelated-Kernel-Density-Estimates using the segmentation method. Sharks spent, on average, 88% of their time in L-MPAs, with 44% of sharks spending 100% of their time inside an L-MPA. On average, sharks spent greater time in general-use-areas (34%) than in fully-protected-areas (17%) and spent 23±2.4 SE days inside predicted-foraging-areas, with a mean core-area (50% AKDE) of 1490.4 km2 (95% CI: 629.8 – 3005.1 km2). While 42% of sharks tagged in the GBRMP migrated to CSMP, all their predicted-foraging-areas were identified in the GBRMP. We also found high connectivity between NMP and CSNP, with 41% of sharks tagged in NMP using predicted-foraging-areas in both CSNP and NMP. Our findings show that tiger sharks benefit from considerable protection in the L-MPAs within the eastern Australia and Coral Sea regions.