Geographic profiling applied to track hunting patterns of white sharks in So...(vertical attack Hammerschlag said. Thi...)

Hammerschlag and his collaborators from the University of British Columbia and Texas State University collected data on 340 natural predatory attacks by sharks on seals in False Bay. They were able to observe natural predation by great white sharks because attacks occur at the water's surface where they can be seen from a distance. The researchers found that spatial patterns of shark predation at this site were nonrandom and that smaller sharks had more dispersed prey search patterns and lower kill success rates than larger sharks.

This could mean that white sharks refine their search patterns with experience, and learn to concentrate hunting efforts in locations with the highest probability of successful prey capture. It might also suggest that larger sharks competitively exclude smaller sharks from the prime hunting areas.

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Zoology and is now available as an advance online publication of the journal.The study uses geographic profiling for the first time in the marine environment. The technology was originally developed by study co-author Dr. Kim Rossmo of Texas State University to determine the most probable area for a criminal offender's residence or anchor point, and has been used in a number of high-profile police investigations internationally.

In addition to applications in law enforcement, geographic profiling has also been applied to studies of the foraging behavior of bats and bumblebees, the spread of infectious diseases in Africa, and the structure of terrorist cells in the Middle East. For more information about geographic profiling visit: www.txstate.edu/gii

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