Shark Bay is home to a dervise collection of animals and plants; including indangered species and native organisms. It’s ecosystem is diverse and driven mostly by aquatic biotic and abiotic factors. Abiotic factors include salt concentration, sunlight (weather), water depth, sand/soil, temperature, nutrients and altitude. While biotic factors include numerous species of fish and other aquatic creatures (sharks, dugongs ect), invertebrates (spiders, coral etc.), amphibians and reptiles (geckos, turtles and frogs), birds and many mammals (dolphins, bilby’s, dugongs)

Shark Bay is a significant ecosystem because it provides shelter and homes for many Australian organisms, while helping the Australian environment mature and evolve.

GECKO & SUNLIGHT

Geckos are lizards found in warm climates throughout the world, including Shark Bay. Ranging from 1.6 to 60 cm, most geckos cannot blink, but they often lick their eyes to keep them clean and moist.

Sunlight, being an aboitic fator, produces heat and light to warm the Earth. Sunlight affects geckos, to the geckos advantage by providing heat and warming the geckos blood making it easier to wake-up and move. Geckos also use sunlight to get Vitamin D and this helps them to stay healthy.

SHARK BAY BOODIE

Bettongia lesueur lesueur, more commonly known as the Shark Bay Boodie, is a chunky little marsupial measuring about 35–40 cm long and weighing about 1.5 kg. Its fur is grey with a cinnamon tinge, growing paler on the underbelly. Its tail averages 30 cm long and is thick and fatty when food is plentiful.

The boodie is the only member of the kangaroo family that regularly inhabits burrows. It sleeps in a soft grassy nest built inside its burrow and prefers to dig their burrows in coastal sand dunes and spinifex hummocks.

The Shark Bay Boodie eats many smaller animals (aquatic and land), and has also been found digging into turtle nests.

There are many adaptation to the boodie, some include the tail is weakly prehensile, and possibly used like a hand to carry nesting material. The boodie also has a hunched posture but despite its rodent-like qualities, it hops around on its hind legs like any other kangaroo. And its snub nose, smaller ears and usually white tip to its tail, helps identify it from the other small hare-wallabies it shares its home with.

ORGANISM INTERACTIONS

WHALE SHARK

An indangered spieces in and around Shark Bay is the whale shark. Growing up to 12 m long its the world’s biggest fish.

Its massive body, broad flattened head, rounded dorsal fin and crescent-shaped tail are decorated with a ‘checkerboard’ pattern of light spots and stripes on a darker background. These beautiful markings might serve as camouflage from predators in the dappled light of the ocean.

The whale shark is targeted by commercial and artisan fisheries, and therefore has put them in the list of endangered species.