The Micronesian Shark Foundation has enlisted US National Geographic magazine's Crittercam and will this week head out to catch reef sharks, clip on cameras stocked with several hours of tape and record exactly what sharks do when people are not around.

They will also fasten acoustic tags to the sharks' tails to track how far they travel over about six months and will monitor shark populations.

"You cannot manage a resource without understanding a resource," said Phillip Lobel, a marine biology professor from Boston University and the foundation's principal scientist.

"In this case, you have to understand the biology of the shark."

While these prehistoric predators have long captivated the public's imagination, the difficulty of studying them and producing solid results in short order has led scientists to shy away from pursuing research projects, Lobel said.

At the same time, in Palau and across the globe, fishermen have increasingly targeted sharks for markets in Southeast Asia where the expensive dish of shark fin soup is widely popular. Many shark populations have been knocked out by over fishing, Lobel said.

"The tragedy is they are not fishing sharks to feed hungry people," Lobel said. "They are wiping these animals out for a high-priced luxury item. And they are wiping them out faster them we can study them."

Palau, which attracts scuba divers from around the world to view its stunning reef shark population, is one of the few small island nations to aggressively protect sharks.

Around 850 kilometres (520 miles) east of the Philippines with a population of nearly 20,000, Palau passed an anti-shark fishing law and has seized several cargos of shark fins in the last year.

But to truly protect reef sharks in Palau and elsewhere, more information is needed, said Tova Bornovski, who operates the dive outfit Fish 'n Fins and was spurred to found the shark foundation.

Questions over where sharks breed, whether they migrate from island to island, whether there are unseen threats to sharks that need to be considered, and if the Palau's shark population is declining all remain a mystery.

Crittercam may provide some of the answers.

Developed by Greg Marshall of National Geographic, Crittercam records video along with temperature and depth.

Marshall was struck by the idea for Crittercam when in 1986 off Belize when he watched a suckerfish attach itself to the underbelly of a shark. With just a few twitches of its mighty tail, the shark was gone as suddenly as it appeared.

"But that (sucker) fish was seeing everything," Marshall said.

"With Crittercam, for the first time we are not guessing at what they are doing, we are seeing what they are doing."

To attach the camera and acoustic tag, the shark is caught with a barbless hook and pulled along side the boat. The shark is then turned on its back, a position that causes the shark to go into a docile state and the tag is easily fastened. The shark is then turned over and the camera is carefully clipped around its dorsal fin.

The camera automatically releases in two hours. The tags rust off in about six months, and will record where the shark moves as the tag registers with a smattering of acoustic recorders set along the ocean bottom.

TERRA.WIRE