Because of movies like Jaws, people have become more conscious (and sometimes, overly paranoid) about sharks and whether or not one might suddenly bite them while they’re in the water. Most beaches aren’t infested with sharks, and a lot don’t wander too far out into the shore. That said, sharks do occasionally end up in areas where people are frolicking by the beach, so unless the beach has posted some warnings about it, then there’s no need to fret.
The odds are against most people because they don’t find out that there’s a shark in the waters…until the shark is a few feet away. With this in mind, scientists in Western Australia have devised a different system to alert people of the presence of sharks in the water: Twitter.
The scientists have tagged 320 sharks found in the area with a collar. When the sharks swim within a kilometer of the beach, the onshore monitors pick up their signal and post a tweet on Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s twitter account. The tweets indicate the shark’s location, distance of the shark from the shore, time of sighting, and type of shark, if that information is available.
VIA [ Dvice ]
