Gulf Wobbegong

Endemic to Australian waters, the gulf wobbegong is found along interconnected coastal and reef regions spanning across the southern coast of the continent and beyond, ranging from Hervey Bay, Queensland, south to off Flinders Island (Bass Strait), Tasmania, and west to Norwegian Bay, Western Australia.

As with other wobbegong sharks, O. halei is a nocturnal ambush predator with exceptional camouflage; they can be found resting during daylight hours and A quantitative diet study identified 151 prey items of larger O. halei specimens which had been caught in commercial fishing nets; among the prey species was yellowtail scad, blue mackerel, eastern blue groper, mulloway, Port Jackson shark, and Orectolobus ornatus, the ornate wobbegong. Strong evidence for social association within the genus has been observed. A 1991 dive survey provided early evidence of site attachment, with individual wobbegongs observed in exactly the same positions on consecutive dives. At Fish Rock, New South Wales, subsequent acoustic-telemetry research documented site fidelity in O. halei, with three of seven tagged sharks regularly detected at Fish Rock and the longest-resident individual detected nearly two years after tagging. Further south at Cabbage Tree Bay Aquatic Reserve near Sydney, a 2016 study of spotted wobbegongs (O. …

The common name "wobbegong" is derived from an Australian term native to the New South Wales region and has been recorded in English since 1852.The gulf wobbegong, Orectolobus halei, is named in honor of Australian naturalist Herbert Mathew Hale (1895–1963), researcher, field zoologist and natural-history collector of considerable standing, who became director of the institution that held and studied Australian zoological material, the South Australian Museum, from 1931 to 1960.