Great white ways

HER name is Nicole, she travels widely and she makes international headlines.

But no, she has never starred in a film and she was never married to Tom Cruise.
Meet our "other Nicole" - a great white shark that has set records for trans-ocean travel and has startled researchers with the insights she has given them into shark behaviour.

South African researcher Ramon Bonfil today publishes the results of a 15-month study of great white sharks in the international journal Science.

Dr Bonfil and his team used electronic tags on 32 sharks and recorded their movements.

On November 7, 2003, they tagged shark P12, a 3.8m sub-adult which went on to make the first known trans-oceanic return migration, swimming from South Africa to Australia and back.

In honour of the Australian connection, Dr Bonfil named it "Nicole", after Nicole Kidman.
Nicole made other impressive performances: her 99-day, 11,100km journey from South Africa to just off the West Australian coast was made at a minimum 4.7km/h - "the fastest sustained long-distance speed known among sharks and comparable to that of some of the fastest-swimming tunas," Dr Bonfil reported.

When Nicole was once again spotted off the South African coast in August, 2004, she demonstrated more than a navigational ability never before seen in sharks - the 20,000km-plus trip was also the fastest recorded return migration for a marine animal.

How Nicole navigated the trip remains a mystery, but the information from Dr Bonfil's research also raises new challenges in protecting sharks.

They were once thought to be coastal creatures, but journeys into the open seas leave them exposed to other threats, such as long-line fishing boats.

CSIRO research scientist and shark expert Barry Bruce said Dr Bonfil's work showed the importance of understanding shark movement patterns and the ways in which populations are related.

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