Shark Bay
Gascoyne, WA · Shire of Shark Bay · Relative human–shark interaction conditions
Experimental · uncalibrated
Evidence freshness: 19 Sept 2026, 12:27 am
Dominant evidence class for the index: Historical seasonal association
Why?
- •Area roll-up of 2 sub-locations (0.5×max + 0.5×mean public index)
- •Highest localised index: Denham (27.8/100 · MODERATE)
- •Sub-location precision limited where data is MOCK or incomplete
- •Water temperature (~22.5°C) favours tiger shark thermal suitability
Shark Bay interaction risk is a development roll-up of 2 sub-locations (0.5*max(child publicIndex)+0.5*mean(child publicIndex); conf=min(child); hazard=max(child)). Public index 27.8/100 — MODERATE. Combined confidence moderate. Sub-location data may be MOCK or incomplete; this is not an operational warning system. Always follow lifeguard instructions, beach closures, and official WA SharkSmart / DPIRD advice. vShark is not a government or SLSA product.
Species conditions
No species contribution breakdown for this assessment.
Subtropical / tropical western hypothesis: tiger and other warm-water species are expected to weigh more than on the south coast. Hypothesis to be tested — not a claim of current dominance.
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
- moderate
- Model exposure
- 0.45
Activity classes: swimming, boat fishing, diving
Estimated, not observed counts. No false precision.
Persistent spatial context
- lagoon
- seagrass
- beach
Geomorphology is persistent context, not a transient observation.
Data gaps
- sub location live feeds
Missing data reduces confidence; it does not mean low risk.
Nested locations
- DenhamMODERATE
- Monkey MiaMODERATE
Nearby locations
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Sept 2026, 12:27 am | MODERATE | 27.8 | MODERATE | 0.1.0-dev |
| 18 Sept 2026, 8:29 pm | LOW | 23 | 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