DOI: 10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr6j
title: BRUVs recordings of blacktip reef and lemon sharks in Tetiaroa

description: There is growing evidence of the important role learning plays in shark
 foraging, but few studies have examined the relationship between learning
 and foraging behaviour in free-living settings. We addressed this
 knowledge gap by experimentally contrasting responses of blacktip reef
 (Carcharhinus melanopterus) and sicklefin lemon (Negaprion acutidens)
 sharks to an olfactory-only feeding stimulus – baited remote underwater
 video stations (BRUVS) – that was either offered repeatedly at the same
 location or spatially randomized throughout the lagoon of Tetiaroa, French
 Polynesia. Blacktip reef sharks exhibited behaviour consistent with the
 hypothesis that cue predictability fosters spatial associative learning,
 exhibiting increasing relative abundance upon introduction of the cue
 (MaxN at deployment) and decreasing arrival times as the experiment
 progressed, whereas sicklefin lemon sharks showed no evidence of varying
 responses to cue treatment type over time. Accordingly, our findings
 advance our understanding of shark cognition by highlighting that spatial
 associations can develop in response to stable feeding cues even when the
 olfactory attractant is not accompanied by a reward, while also indicating
 that shark responses to anthropogenic feeding cues can be
 species-specific. They also suggest that, for at least some shark species,
 olfactory cues alone could lead to habituation that confounds non-invasive
 efforts to monitor shark populations and communities (e.g., with BRUVS)
 and drive spatial associations with the potential to promote both
 ecotourism and negative human-shark interactions.
description: # BRUVs recordings of blacktip reef and lemon sharks in Tetiaroa
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr6j](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr6j) The dataset includes detection data for 2 shark species (blacktip reef, sicklefin lemon) recorded on baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVs) deployed in Tetiaroa, French Polynesia, over the course of 23 days in 2016. For each BRUVs drop (lasting an hour), data are presented in separate rows for lemon and then blacktip sharks. ## Description of the data and file structure The data file has the following columns. **File**: The specific drop ID (note again that there are two file IDs per drop; one for lemons and one for blacktips). **Treatment**: Whether the specific BRUVs occurred at a randomly generated location within Tetiaroa's lagoon ('random'), or a pre-selected (single) location where BRUVs were deployed repeatedly ('repeated'). **Camera:** type of camera used in the BRUVs (for this study, all were mono GoPros). **Date**: Date of the drop. **Time**: Timing of the drop. **deployed.dt:** Date and time combined. **Camera.bottom:** Time it took for the camera to get settled on the bottom of the lagoon, with silt settled (data collection began at this stage of the deployment). **Species**: data for either lemon or blacktip reef sharks. **MaxN:** Highest number of any shark species seen in one frame (extracted via a frame-by-frame analysis). **MaxN.time:** Time elapsing between the beginning of data collection (camera.bottom) and when MaxN for a particular shark species was achieved. **toa:** time to first arrival for a particular shark species during a drop (minutes). **toa.maxN:** initial MaxN (first 2 minutes of data collection) **depth:** water depth (in m) in which a BRUVs was dropped. **Set:** Whether the BRUVs was dropped during the first of second wave of the day (morning or afternoon). **Sample day:** day of the study (over the course of 23 days) on which the drop occurred. **t.sample.day:** 7 days added to random deployments to harmonize timing of repeated and random BRUVs (to compare results over the same time interval in a companion analysis - see appendices). **N/A:** Note, for drops during which no sharks were observed in the video, a "NA" has been entered for "time to" variables (e.g., to a, or time of arrival, as no sharks arrived).