Port Macquarie
Mid North Coast, NSW · Port Macquarie-Hastings · Relative human–shark interaction conditions
Bull shark conditions
Bull shark ecological conditions are assessed as MODERATE (development model bull-shark-0.1-dev) with very low confidence. This is not an attack probability and is not the mixed-species 0–100 interaction index.
Factors reducing conditions
- No live authorised bull-shark detections in vShark.
- Seasonal prior for this month is not the peak east-coast inshore hypothesis window.
Uncertainty
- EAC / current velocity is a candidate variable and is not connected.
- Acoustic receiver health is UNKNOWN — SharkSmart/IMOS tracking is not machine-connected.
- River discharge gauges are not connected; rainfall is only a proxy.
Environmental indicators are not confirmed shark observations. This is not an attack prediction and is not the mixed-species 0–100 index.
Experimental · uncalibrated
Evidence freshness: 21 Sept 2026, 3:34 pm
Dominant evidence class for the index: Environmental habitat suitability
Why?
- •No live shark detections — this is not an operational alert
Shark interaction risk is assessed as MODERATE (public index 25.9/100) with moderate combined confidence. Primary drivers: No live shark detections — this is not an operational alert. 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 NSW SharkSmart advice. vShark is not a government or SLSA product.
Species conditions
Bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) corridor node. Estuarine and coastal use is an ecological basis; migration pulse is a 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
- unknown
- Popularity proxy
- unknown
- Model exposure
- 0.45
Estimated, not observed counts. No false precision.
Persistent spatial context
- beach
- river mouth
Geomorphology is persistent context, not a transient observation.
Data gaps
- turbidity proxy
- live detections
- recent detections
Missing data reduces confidence; it does not mean low risk.
Nearby locations
- Hastings River0.9 km
- Macleay River63.1 km
- Coffs Harbour127.4 km
- Hunter River196.4 km
- Hunter197.8 km
- Yamba225.4 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
NSW SharkSmart is not connected. MOCK detections do not enter the score.
- Ocean coverageMODERATE
Open-Meteo marine at the Northern Beaches centroid.
- Weather coverageMODERATE
Open-Meteo weather at the Northern Beaches centroid.
- Ecology coverageLOW
iNaturalist and climatologies are labelled context and do not enter the score.
- Human exposure coverageLOW
Provisional calendar and swell proxy only.
- Sensor coverageNONE
No authorised detection network connected.
- Historical coverageLOW
Assessment history is append-only from this prototype, not a long operational archive.
NOW / HISTORY — recent assessments
Append-only model outputs. New model versions do not rewrite these rows.
| When | Band | Index | Confidence | Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Sept 2026, 3:34 pm | MODERATE | 25.9 | 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