Shark Meshing Program Catch and Effort Data for New South Wales, 1950–2017

68 years of shark catch and netting effort data from the Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program in New South Wales, Australia. The dataset includes total shark catch, catch of great white, tiger, and whaler sharks, estimates of netting effort, and catch per unit effort. It was created by Lachlan C. Fetterplace and colleagues, supporting a 2019 study on shark hazard management.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in shark populations based on total catch and species-specific catch data.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of shark hazard management based on catch per unit effort metrics.
• Assessing the impact of netting effort on different shark species, including great white, tiger, and whaler sharks.
• Comparing estimated and actual total shark catch values for data validation purposes.

Strengths

• Covers 68 consecutive netting seasons from 1950 to 2017, providing a long-term perspective.
• Includes data for specific shark species (great white, tiger, whaler) mentioned in the description.
• Contains a separate file for data validation, comparing extracted and actual total catch values.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified beyond 2017.

Provenance

Source

Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program, New South Wales, Australia.

Collection Method

Likely contains programmatic catch records and effort estimates from the bather protection initiative.

Time Range

1950–2017

Geography

New South Wales, Australia