Riley Elliott Instagram – It is so cool to see incredible research projects being done in areas where an issue was raised, regarding sharks, and was later addressed to such incredible extent as this one – The Tiger Sharks of Norfolk Island. Some of you may remember the Shark Week shows I did there in 2019 and 2021 – Headstone Hell – where we saw insane imagery of cow eating sharks – no one had ever dived with these sharks intentionally, and no one really knew much about them, other than the fact that they aggregated in a bay where cow offal was dumped regularly. The disposal wasn’t a barbaric ritual or anything, it was simply a practice done for 100 years, in order to avoid ground water contamination if buried underground on this tiny island. Evolving government rule and spreading bureaucracy meant marine park restrictions would ban the disposal of offal, which raised the question from locals (who never had any adverse interactions with sharks historically), will this alter the sharks behaviour towards us? Some people may critique Shark Week, but in this case, it enabled myself and an amazing team to use science, exploration, and definitely some balls, to generate a greater understanding as to why the most Tiger sharks ever seen, aggregate at this site, and how reliant they are on the food provisioning. As is only capable in a TV show window of time, we made incredible but short term discoveries, and proposed to the Australian government, that local research should be undertaken in order to ensure human and shark co-existence continues in this amazing place. I am SOOOO stoked to see the incredible work of local Aussie researchers doing exactly that. Check out this awesome study summary https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9d01e95d93b54978a386f4754a3f8f8e (link in bio) it is so engaging, so well done, with such novel discoveries, and many many questions answered for locals, by fellow nationals. I love it when you see great progress made in a manner that is using modern forms of science coms. Thank you to all the amazing Norfolk locals who shared their wonderful backyard, and thank you to fellow shark researchers from Aussie, who spearheaded this ongoing research. Incredible work.