More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/01/258670211/more-than-300-sharks-in-australia-are-now-on-twitter

by RougeFemme • 13 years ago

53 26 13 years ago

zik• 13 years ago

I swam at the pictured beach - Gracetown beach in WA - only two days ago. Fortunately there were no sharks that day, although it does have the highest shark death rate of any beach in the country.

paul92902• 13 years ago

This is a very cool!

I wish something slightly similar could be done to eliminate road kill.

One idea I've thought of to eliminate roadkill/keep them in the woods is to have some type of high pitched sonar attached to the outside of your car. You turn it on and or it activates itself based on location. Animals would hear it coming from a quarter mile away and run in it's opposite direction.

HA that's probably not the greatest solution, but road kill is costly and unpleasant. It would be neat to see someone come up with a good solution!

nostromo• 13 years ago

I'm seeing more and more wildlife crossings out west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trans-Canada-wildlife_over...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cerviduct.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgOMcpUN5RY

madsushi• 13 years ago

They actually have car whistlers that you can attach to your hood that are supposed to deter wildlife.

mrspandex• 13 years ago

Like this? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XNGLJU

These are very common in Michigan, where I live

qbrass• 13 years ago

I've put them on plenty of cars, they only seem to catch bugs which plug the holes up. The electronic ones at least keep making noise, but there's still no telling if they actually help.

I guess it's worth a shot, but I never expect much from them.

madeofpalk• 13 years ago

We have them in Australia...

Shoo Roo! http://www.shuroo.com

WA• 13 years ago

These should be in rental cars. I think I've never seen as many dead animals next to the road as in West Australia. Glad I didn't hit one in 4 weeks.

paul92902• 13 years ago

Maybe this isn't a bad idea after all.

I guess I can't tell what is a good idea or not. I mean my team & I just created a web app that plays, pauses & stops audio in sync across multiple devices (flash mob anyone), but hmm we might be working on the wrong idea.

http://SpeakerBlast.com - Blast audio in sync across multiple devices. NO?

danso• 13 years ago

This is cute, but it kind of falls under the "Let's do this thing we've done, but with new social media technology!" category rather than something genuinely useful.

Not being attacked by a shark is a real-time scenario... A shark that is 0.75 miles away could easily be 0.5 miles away by the time you've checked your phone, got off your towel, and tip-toed into the water.

I'm not dismissing the program by making it keep promises that it hasn't made...it just highlights how technology needs to be a strategy...to have these signals out in a public API is very cool, but for it to serve its ostensible safety purpose, the beaches need to be equipped with a public-announcement system that keys off of that data (whether it be a Twitter feed or whatever the scientists were using before).

blasphemous• 13 years ago

100% agree, a solar powered siren connected to the GSM phone network in the middle of the beach you'd think would be more useful.

rithi• 13 years ago

+ the adrenalin rush when running from trouble (the fun in danger)

yaeger• 13 years ago

No no no. No Siren, they must play the Jaws theme!

jfoster2• 13 years ago

I was also thinking along these lines, but I wonder if they chose the distance to match the behaviour patterns of sharks. How quickly would a shark approach a beach when feeling hungry?

schappim• 13 years ago

The Internet of Things that bite you.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

#tastysurfers

snorkel• 13 years ago

https://twitter.com/TheAverageShark

caprad• 13 years ago

Would rather see a rss feed that could be used in an app, with details of the shark locations. But I guess you would have the problem of some yahoo tracking down the shark and killing it, although it is a protected species.

Namrog84• 13 years ago

I read the article looking for one thing. Them mentioning the potential for false sense of security. I was very pleased and Happy they mentioned it. As it was my first thought. After reading what they were doing. I may have overlooked it but did they mention any estimates about how many sharks there are in that area? Even if a wild guess? To reflect are there only 300 of 10,000 sharks tagged or 100,000?

jfoster2• 13 years ago

A sense of security from shark attacks is probably not false, given the unlikelihood of it.

semerda• 13 years ago

Nice step forward. This really needs to be all around Australia not just Western Australia. With the majority of the population on the East coast, something like it or even an app like California has "Shark Net" would be super.

midas007• 13 years ago

If they had lasers or Fonz jumping over them, that would be impressive.

timdiggerm• 13 years ago

That's about 300 Shark Fin Soups with a really easy hunt.

userbinator• 13 years ago

I'm a little surprised it's not GPS-based, with prices on GPS modules these days easily below $20. Make it powered by water movement and you can have receivers nearby to pick up the signals, so that you can see exactly which sharks are where, how fast they're moving, their depth, etc. The signals just have to be strong enough to be receivable when the shark is reasonably near, any since any that are farther away are of less concern. Even better if they show them on a big screen at the beach.

mathattack• 13 years ago

I wonder about the predictability of this. There are 100s of millions of sharks out there. (Maybe more?) How much can the location of 300 predict? Is it that sharks travel in packs, so where there is one, there is many?

To the extent that this moves us away from viewing sharks as monsters, it will be useful.

We kill 100s of thousands of them (maybe even millions?) for every one of us that they get, despite their natural advantage in water. Killing them is a shame.

sirkneeland• 13 years ago

Just think of the opportunities for marketing promos with the next "Sharknado" movie!

More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter

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