Cervantes
Mid West, WA · Shire of Dandaragan · Relative human–shark interaction conditions
Experimental · uncalibrated
Evidence freshness: 18 Sept 2026, 8:29 pm
Dominant evidence class for the index: Historical seasonal association
Why?
- •No live shark detections — this is not an operational alert
- •Missing SST reduces model confidence
Shark interaction risk is assessed as LOW (public index 23.5/100) with moderate combined confidence. Primary drivers: No live shark detections — this is not an operational alert; Missing SST reduces model confidence. No live shark-detection feed is connected. This is an experimental development assessment, not an operational warning. Always follow lifeguard instructions, beach closures, and official WA SharkSmart / DPIRD advice. vShark is not a government or SLSA product.
Species conditions
Mid-west transition hypothesis: tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) relevance is expected to increase relative to the south coast. Hypothesis to be tested.
Recent detections / sightings
No shark observations are stored for this location. That is a data gap, not evidence that sharks are absent. SharkSmart WA is not machine-connected.
CACHED rows are curated public notices, not a live tagged-shark feed, and do not enter the 0–100 as live detections.
Environmental state
No environmental observations stored yet. Open-Meteo ingest writes to a regional centroid.
Human exposure
- Class
- estimated
- Popularity proxy
- low
- Model exposure
- 0.45
Activity classes: swimming, surfing, shore fishing, diving
Estimated, not observed counts. No false precision.
Persistent spatial context
- beach
- reef
Geomorphology is persistent context, not a transient observation.
Data gaps
- sea surface temperature
- turbidity proxy
- live detections
- recent detections
Missing data reduces confidence; it does not mean low risk.
Nearby locations
- Jurien Bay22.6 km
- Lancelin62.1 km
- Dongara140.1 km
- Burns Beach149.5 km
- Iluka150.6 km
- Ocean Reef153.0 km
Data coverage
Where vShark knows little is as important as where it knows more. Missing coverage does not mean low risk.
- Shark observation coverageNONE
SharkSmart WA / DPIRD detections are not machine-connected. No live tagged detections in vShark.
- Ocean coverageMODERATE
Open-Meteo marine SST and wave height at a regional centroid — not a beach sensor.
- Weather coverageMODERATE
Open-Meteo forecast weather at a regional centroid.
- Ecology coverageLOW
No live prey, whale, seal or productivity feed. Seasonal notes are hypotheses or climatology.
- Human exposure coverageLOW
Estimated from popularity class, weekday/weekend and swell. Not a head-count.
- Sensor coverageNONE
No acoustic, camera, drone or eDNA adapters connected.
- Historical coverageLOW
Incident reconstructions are added as frozen validation cases, not a complete history.
NOW / HISTORY — recent assessments
Append-only model outputs. New model versions do not rewrite these rows.
| When | Band | Index | Confidence | Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Sept 2026, 8:29 pm | LOW | 23.5 | MODERATE | 0.1.0-dev |
Evidence hierarchy
- Direct recent detection — Tagged receiver, verified instrument detection, or equivalent in the relevant window.
- Verified sighting — Sighting confirmed by a responsible authority or trained observer.
- Multiple corroborated observations — Independent reports that agree in space and time.
- Strong ecological proxy — Prey aggregation, carcass, or similar with documented association — still a proxy.
- Environmental habitat suitability — Temperature, depth, and similar suitability — not presence.
- Historical seasonal association — Climatology / phenology prior. Not a live observation.
- Long-term background prevalence — Baseline occurrence in the region. Weakest for now-casting.
Methodology
Relative interaction risk, not attack probability. Official advice outranks this page. Methodology · Data sources