How Many Grey Nurse Sharks?
Anecdotal reports published in the Daily Telegraph suggest Grey Nurse Shark numbers have been underestimated. I think anyone who cares about such things would be pleased to hear that there are indeed 6000 grey nurse sharks in our waters. But I’m not breaking open the bubbly in response to unreported assertions by recreational fishers and unnamed “insiders”. Grey nurse sharks were once a plentiful species in NSW- there used to be far more than 6000 of them. The grey nurse shark was the second most commonly caught shark after the whaler shark around Port Stephens in the 1920s. It is now suggested by respected marine ecologists after numerous exhaustive studies that the NSW population may not have the capacity to recover unless fishing mortality is eliminated. These studies suggest the NSW population is less than 1000 individuals. The largest number of animals seen on the coast during any one survey was 292 individuals. In 2002, NSW Fisheries initiated a tagging program to estimates of th
