Unfortunately, the technology is expensive, and the research may have to be suspended if the state won't help the federal government fund the project. The researchers are frustrated, fearing that their work will be halted just when they are on the verge of solving the most intriguing mysteries of tiger shark behavior.
The biggest mystery is where do tiger sharks go when they aren't interacting with humans?
A shark took this bite from Greg Filtzer's surfboard off Kauai's Hanalei
Point
in October 1990. "I don't think anything should be done about the
shark. I was in
his environment . . . ," Filtzer says. "He got a fiberglass
sandwich and I never saw
him again. He didn't want me."
Photo by Joan Conrow, Star-Bulletin
The next phase of research will reveal how often the sharks return to where they were caught. Researchers have installed two listening posts on the ocean floor that extract data around the clock from the sharks' transmitters. "Of 11 sharks with long-term transmitters, we have heard five on the bottom receivers," Holland said.
The sharks vanish from where they are caught and have reappeared a few weeks to six months later, he said. "These animals do revisit the same spots, but they don't camp out in the same place. They probably travel large distances before coming back to the same place."
The implication is that if tiger sharks don't have fidelity to an area but rather range far and wide while hunting, it makes no sense to kill sharks in the vicinity of an attack and expect to solve the problem.
Help may be on the horizon. State Department of Land and Natural Resources chief Mike Wilson has indicated that he might ask the Legislature for shark-research funds this session. State Rep. Alex Santiago, chairman of the Ocean Recreation and Marine Resources Committee, also intends to explore whether the state should fund Holland's shark studies.
The researchers are heartened by such talk, but remain cautious. At the height of the hysteria and headlines generated by an alarming number of shark attacks on surfers and swimmers between 1991 and 1993, the Legislature allocated $20,000 for shark research.
The money never reached the researchers, as the state cut it during its continuing fiscal crisis. Santiago cautions that funding shark research is a hard sell in tight fiscal times when state workers are laid off and social services slashed.
And there is no guarantee that funding won't be cut again even if it makes it through the legislative maze.
Jonathan Mozo looked like this after a shark attacked him near
Goat Island on Oahu's north shore in June 1993. "I didn't have any
feelings of hatred or revenge. If anything, I felt grateful to (the shark)
that he let me go. I felt I was out there intruding on his world,
and he let me live," Mozo says.
Star-Bulletin Photo
The shark researchers point out that their studies and a detailed examination of the data from previous state shark-control efforts show that incidental hunts and eradication programs don't help prevent shark attacks.
"If the information (from the control programs) had gotten out, a lot of policymakers would have felt fairly silly about some of the things they were doing and saying," said UH researcher Brad Wetherbee.
The data show that attack rates didn't go down during shark-control programs, and new attacks occurred during and immediately after the massive hunts.
If tiger sharks have a large range, fishing in an area after an attack might provide only psychological reassurance, and maybe a false sense of safety.
Ocean researchers believe that until more is known about large sharks' movements and habits, it is difficult to develop policies that effectively keep humans and sharks from harmful encounters.
"We have the ball rolling and it would be a shame to stop it now," said Santiago. "It's much too important. We don't have enough knowledge about them. The sharks will always be out there, but there is so much we need to learn about them."