David Sims is known for research on the behaviour, ecology and conservation of sharks studied using remote tracking technology and for making advances in the field of animal movement ecology.
Beginning in 1995 Sims studied the behavioural ecology of the plankton-feeding basking shark, the world's second largest fish. He showed from long-term field studies of behaviour and satellite tracking that basking sharks do not hibernate in winter, overturning an understanding which had stood for nearly 50 years. Sims' satellite tracking of basking sharks were some of the first long-term trackings of any shark species and contributed directly to successful conservation proposals to list basking sharks on Appendix II of the and the . Basking sharks were also studied to find out how predatory fish actually respond to variations in preydensity gradients in the ocean, results which were published in the journal Nature, and have since informed search algorithms, and the biological significance of ocean fronts to predators, which have potential as candidates for high-seasprotected areas.
Scaling laws of movement
Research has identified common scaling laws that describe movement paths and behaviour patterns of highly diverse aquatic and aerial predators such as jellyfish, cephalopods, reptiles, sharks, bony fish, penguins, and albatrosses. It is argued that Sims' work has provided the strongest empirical evidence for the existence of movement patterns that are well approximated by biological Lévy flights and Lévy walks, a special class of random walk that theoretically optimise random searches for sparsely distributed resources. It is said that Sims' work has shifted the debate on biological Lévy walks from whether they exist, to how and why they arise. He also conducted the first empirical field tests of the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis, which states that since Lévy walks can optimise random searches, search patterns must have naturally evolved in organisms to exploit Lévy walks. The hypothesis has been supported in several of Sims' studies, presenting the possibility that optimal searching movements approximated by Lévy patterns have evolved in organisms. In the book , the physicist and best-selling authorAlbert-László Barabási writes: “Yet if a Lévy flight offers the best search strategy, why didn’t natural selection force animals to exploit it? In February 2008 David Sims showed that it did, in fact.” Sims' 2008 Nature paper announcing the discovery of is a Web of ScienceHighly Cited Paper. Since then additional evidence for biological Lévy walks has accumulated across a wide range of taxa including microbes and humans and in fossil trails of extinct invertebrates, suggesting an ancient origin of the movement pattern. The research extends the decades-old model of normal diffusion for animal movement and dispersal. His work contributes to the emerging understanding in animal movement ecology that normal diffusion is insufficient for describing natural movements such as searching behaviour but that anomalous diffusion is required.
Spatial overlap of sharks and fisheries
In 2016 Sims led an international team tracking ocean-wide movements of sharks. They found pelagic sharks like the shortfin mako aggregate in space-use "hotspots" characterized by fronts and high plankton biomass. Data showed longlinefishing vessels also targeted the habitats and efficiently tracked shark movements seasonally, leading to an 80% spatial overlap. The work suggests current hotspots are at risk from overfishing and argued for introduction of international catch limits. The results were reported widely in the media including in The Times newspaper and the journal Science.
Global Shark Movement Project
He initiated the Global Shark Movement Project, an international collaboration of research groups across 26 countries. The database assembled contains over 2,000 satellite tracks of sharks and is used . In 2019 the published its first results in Nature reporting a global spatial risk assessment of sharks. They showed nearly one quarter of shark space-use hotspots overlap with longline fisheries each month, rising to over 60% each month for commercially valuable sharks and internationally protected species. Shark hotspots were also associated with significant increases in fishing effort, leading the team to conclude that pelagic sharks have limited spatial refuge from current levels of fishing effort in marine areas beyond national jurisdictions. They suggest large-scale marine reserves centred on shark hotspots could help to limit shark exploitation on the high seas. The paper was reported worldwide including by the BBC, CNN and NPR. It has been commented that the paper has “provided a much-needed blueprint for conservation actions that could be used to provide sharks with safe havens in our increasingly crowded oceans”.
Science and media
Sims' research on basking shark behaviour was the subject of an award-winning documentary, , by the Cornish film company , that aired on Sky in December 2004. The film won the British Council Youth and Science Award at the HelsingborgFilm Festival, Sweden, in 2004. Sims' research has received media attention, including articles in New Scientist, Science, Science News, Physics World, and in documentaries programmes for BBC Television, such as BBC1 "Animal Camera" with Steve Leonard, BBC Radio 4 Natural History Programme, Channel 5 "Nick Baker's Weird Creatures" episode 5 – the basking shark, and BBC Radio 4 presented by Adam Rutherford.
