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Posted on Saturday January 2nd 2010 at 8:19 a.m.
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If the sharks then get too near to a beach a satellite receiver will automatically send out emails and text messages to wildlife officials and lifeguards. Currently 74 white sharks have been tagged and there are 20 communications-equipped monitoring stations that have been installed off the Perth WA coast.
Bosses say they hope the network will "provide timely alerts of tagged sharks' presence close to beaches" -- obviously this is unless the lifeguard is busy playing a game on his phone at the time. Australian Department of Fisheries' Senior Research Scientist Dr Rory McAuley said: "With more monitors installed we have improved chances of hearing from tagged sharks, when they are around.
"Although sharks are being tagged to improve our understanding of the risk of attacks, it is also important that beachgoers are advised of detections."
Since the receivers were installed in May, Department of Fisheries' senior research scientist Dr Rory McAuley said sharks had been picked up in Perth waters on four occasion, PerthNow reports.
The last detection was in September.
"The use of the technology that delivers real-time notifications of tag detections hasn't been used in an operational sense anywhere else in the world," Dr McAuley told the website.
The study is aimed at unlocking the secrets of shark migration patterns and how they relate to attacks on humans.
"The information we are hoping to collect will hopefully provide us some answers to the questions we are always asking about how long white sharks spend off our beaches, whether they come back, is there a season, do they come back one year after the other."
In all, researchers hope to tag 100 sharks over the next two years.
The sharks are fitted with the satellite-tracking darts by researchers who shoot or stab the devices into the flank of the animals.
"I think the public's fear of sharks stems largely from a fear of the unknown," Dr McAuley said.
"Any information we can find out about the real risk of people encountering sharks at the beach will hopefully alleviate people's concerns to some degree."
Shark are an ever-present threat in the waters off Perth. Nine years ago, a man was killed by a white pointer in waist-deep water off Cottesloe Beach.
Since then, there have been a dozen shark attacks in Western Australia, two of them fatal.