Texas State University–San Marcos professor Kim Rossmo is famous in crime analysis circles for his creation of geospatial profiling, a mathematical algorithm used to locate the a criminal’s location based on the locations of that criminal’s attacks. Geospatial profiling has been used successfully in a number of cases, and now researchers are turning to Rossmo to catch another killer—sharks.
For the past eight years, Rossmo has been working with shark researcher Aidan Martin to track sharks’ feeding habits and has come to the conclusion (published in the Journal of Zoology this week) that sharks do not attack randomly, but rather tend to hunt in a comfort zone around their home base, similar to serial killers.
In addition, the research found that sharks don’t simply hunt in areas where there is more prey, but tend to adjust their hunting patterns based on success rates, competition from other sharks, and other factors.
Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/06/24/0624sharks.html
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