Environmental factors influencing the distribution of benthic elasmobranchs in Port River

Project description

About 80 benthic elasmobranchs (southern eagle ray, southern fiddler ray, Port Jackson sharks, smooth rays, shovelnose rays) were tagged in Port River in summer 2024-25. While these tags will be detected by an array of 8 receivers deployed throughout Port River and will provide broad movements across Port River, the shallow depths of this system also enable the use of drones to investigate the fine-scale position and distribution of these species across seasons and water temperatures, and gradients of anthropogenic activities. This project will use drones to survey Port River and identify which regions are most used by benthic elasmobranchs and when, and what factors influences their spatio-temporal distribution.  The data collected will also be used to assess the impact of the recent algal bloom by comparing the movements of benthic elasmobranch during the 2024-25 summer, the bloom event in April-July 2025, the summer 2025-26, and April-July 2026.

Co-supervisors

Dr Lauren Meyer and Ms Chloe Roberts

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