Rodney Fox Shark Museum & Learning Centre in Adelaide for better understanding of great white sharks
Available for hosted evening sessions, the Rodney Fox Shark Museum & Learning Centre In Adelaide's Mile End reflected Fox's passion to inspire the appreciation and understanding of great white sharks through research and education.
Image courtesy Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions
Rodney Fox Shark Museum & Learning Centre at Mile End in Adelaide’s inner west expressed the research into the great white shark that’s at the core of the associated Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions and the Fox Shark Research Foundation.
This combined focus on the great white shark originated with South Australian spearfishing champion Rodney Fox’s personal fierce encounter with one of the creatures off Aldinga beach, south of Adelaide, in 1963. This was transformed into a passion for spreading better understanding of the sharks and for having them made a protected species in the 1990s.
The mission of the Fox Shark Research Foundation, set up in 2001, was “to inspire the appreciation and understanding of great white sharks through research and education”. The foundation, started by Rodney Fox, his son Andrew, and Dr Rachel Robbins, aimed to identify and catalogue great white sharks using non-invasive tracker tags and satellite technology to study shark behaviour like breeding, migration, social interaction, feeding habits, and any impact humans may have on them.
Rodney Fox Shark Museum & Learning Centre at Mile End in Adelaide’s inner west expresses the research into the great white shark that’s at the core of the associated Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions and the Fox Shark Research Foundation.
This combined focus on the great white shark originated with South Australian spearfishing champion Rodney Fox’s personal fierce encounter with one of the creatures off Aldinga beach, south of Adelaide, in 1963. This was transformed into a passion for spreading better understanding of the sharks and for having them made a protected species in the 1990s.
The mission of the Fox Shark Research Foundation, set up in 2001, was “to inspire the appreciation and understanding of great white sharks through research and education”. The foundation, started by Rodney Fox, his son Andrew, and Dr Rachel Robbins, aimed to identify and catalogue great white sharks using non-invasive tracker tags and satellite technology to study shark behaviour like breeding, migration, social interaction, feeding habits, and any impact humans may have on them.
Thousands of images were added to the foundation's database captured with more than 1000 individual great whites identified. In partnership with the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the foundation sends tissue samples of the sharks or genetic sampling. Other projects were conducted with SARDI (South Australian Research and Development Institute) and with Dr Charlie Huveneers from Adelaide’s Flinders University.
The Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions to Neptune Islands, at the mouth of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, a hotspot for great white sharks, also contributed to this research. The expedition business took tourists to Neptune Islands to see great white sharks, along with sea lions, schools of fish and even whales, in their natural habitat. Each tour advanced critical research and provides an insight into the importance of the ocean and its inhabitants.
Rodney Fox’s decades of passion, advocacy and ongoing discovery into the great white sgarks aimed to show them as misunderstood, curiously gracious creature rather than man eater. Fox was a much-awarded passionate sharks advocate and a key speaker at many international conservation and diving events. He also gave motivational talks at schools and organisations around the world. He also wrote Sharkman, an award-winning children’s book.
