Crikey Michelle

The Greenough Wildlife and Bird Park manager has just returned from assisting with world-leading crocodile research in northern Queensland.

Michelle Jones was able to attend the research trip to the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve near Weipa, northern Queensland, last year after being selected through a competition.

She impressed the Irwin family enough that she was invited back again to continue helping the research group with two weeks of intensive field work.

Mrs Jones said there was still a huge amount of undocumented biodiversity on the reserve, which was being carefully preserved as biologists and wildlife experts examined the area.

“We spent the first week catching crocs, then the next five days with two professors who were arachnologists, and we found five new species of spider just while we were there,” she said.

“They still haven’t even touched on the basis of what’s out there, they’re actually finding animals out there that we didn’t even know about before.”

A big part of the research is an ongoing crocodile study, involving satellite tags and acoustic trackers.

The tags are inserted under one of the crocodile’s armpits and on its back.

This can be dangerous work, because although the animals are given local anaesthetic to make the operation easier, Mrs Jones said they could sometimes die if sedated so the best way to control them during the tagging process was to tie up their jaws and have a group of people jump on their back and hold them down.

She said she was “lucky” to have experienced this but it was a process with many safety precautions.

“Terry and Robert (Irwin) get on top to put the jaw ropes on, and when he (the crocodile) starts death rolling that actually ties the ropes up quicker, so he helps us, and once he’s done that the team jumps straight on him,” Ms Jones said.

“You only have a couple of seconds to get on the back of that croc and hang on to it — you’re literally there with your head up someone’s butt for probably anywhere up to an hour and a half.”

Craig Franklin, a professor at the University of Queensland, said the study of 150 crocodiles in the Wenlock River (which has been running since 2008 and will extend at least until 2026) was potentially the longest, biggest study of crocodilians ever.

The tag monitors the crocodile’s location, its dive depth, and even its internal and external temperature.

Dr Franklin said such lengthy studies had only recently been made possible by improvements in the acoustic tag technology, which meant the trackers now lasted 10 years before they had to be replaced.

“Over the last eight years we’ve probably done 5 million measurements of position and body temperature across all our crocodiles,” he said.

“Crocodiles have a preferred body temperature, or range of body temperatures, and if it goes out of that — say like when things become too hot — it affects their performance, their ability to swim, and hunt and where they may go.

“There’s a few options; are they able to change their physiology to adapt to new conditions?

“Or if they can’t, will they move to places where the temperature is more suitable further south?”

Dr Franklin said the findings could be used to help reduce human-crocodile conflict.