Australia
Grey Nurse Shark Project
Grey nurse sharks are Critically Endangered. With our partners, we use photo-identification to monitor individual sharks, from surveys at Wolf Rock to a catalog of more than 2,000 sharks along Australia's east coast.
Led by University of the Sunshine Coast, with MMF
Grey nurse sharks (Carcharias taurus), known as sand tigers in the USA, are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. We are helping to build a photo-monitoring program for the species along Australia’s east coast.
Dr. Simon Pierce leads our grey nurse shark work in Australia. There, he is an Adjunct Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Research Manager for Spot A Shark. He is developing photo-identification assisted by artificial intelligence (AI), which allows researchers to identify individual grey nurse sharks and monitor them over time without capturing or tagging them. The work brings together the University of the Sunshine Coast, Spot A Shark, Sundive Research, the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, and the Sharkbook.ai photo-monitoring database.
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Our work on grey nurse sharks
Photo-identification surveys at Wolf Rock
Simon has been leading photo-identification surveys of grey nurse sharks at Wolf Rock, in collaboration with the University of the Sunshine Coast. Wolf Rock is the only known gestation site for the species in eastern Australia, where pregnant females aggregate while their pups develop, which makes it a key site for monitoring the population. The surveys documented long-term resightings, including one shark first recorded more than 20 years earlier.
An east-coast catalog
The Wolf Rock surveys are part of a wider effort to identify grey nurse sharks along the length of Australia’s east coast, with contributions from our partners at Sundive Research. Pictured here, Jarrod Cameron, a PhD candidate at the University of the Sunshine Coast, photo-identifies a grey nurse shark off southeast Queensland. By 2025, the east-coast photo-identification catalog held more than 2,000 individual sharks, a long-term record that researchers can use to monitor the population over time.
AI-assisted photo matching
Sharkbook.ai, the global shark photo-monitoring database, has enhanced its AI models for identifying grey nurse sharks, alongside whale sharks, leopard sharks, and other species. Simon, a scientific advisor to Sharkbook, has been working with the Spot A Shark team, the University of the Sunshine Coast, and the Queensland Government to add grey nurse sharks to the platform, as part of a comprehensive monitoring program for the species.
Contributing dive photographs
If you dive with grey nurse sharks in Australia, your photos could contribute to this work. Visit Spot A Shark to learn how to submit them.
Dr. Simon Pierce
Australia Leopard Shark Project
Coral Sea Whale Shark Project