Genetic Testing In Bid To Save Shark

Sun Herald

Sunday July 25, 2004

By SEAN BERRY

GENETIC testing technology is being used in a bid to save the endangered grey nurse shark.

Scientists from Sydney's Macquarie University and South Africa have joined forces for an urgent study of the shark and its migration and breeding habits.

They are hoping a breakthrough will help reverse the species' alarming decline.

Grey nurse sharks fearsome-looking creatures with a mouthful of sharp teeth, yet relatively harmless to humans were extensively hunted throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

There are now as few as 550 grey nurses off Australia's east coast.

It is an alarmingly small number for maintaining a population said Maquarie University shark expert Rob Harcourt.

"That number also includes young sharks not yet old enough to breed," Dr Harcourt said.

"They have a very unique and very slow breeding system only two pups born in a year and they only breed every two years."

Macquarie's research team includes Dr Harcourt, who is the university's director of marine science, and conservation geneticists Adam Stow, Dr Michael Gillings and Dr David Briscoe.

Dr Stow said the research program would use state-of-the-art DNA forensic tools to establish whether grey nurse sharks migrated between South Africa, Western Australia and Australia's east coast.

They hope to establish whether breeding between these different shark groups could possibly save the population off NSW and Queensland.

"The sharks might be protected in one region and then migrate into another where they are not protected," Dr Stow said.

A study involving Dr Harcourt last year established that east coast grey nurses would most likely be extinct within 50 years unless immediate action was taken.

Discovering their true migration and breeding patterns through DNA testing could provide a key to how best to manage the sharks.