Great White Shark Damage-Guadalupe Island

Yesterday one of our shark divers Gene Williams from our 2007 expeditions sent over some interesting video he shot. What made his footage unique is a shark called "Lucy". This female, first spotted at the island back in 2003 and again in 2004 was a healthy animal until her disappearance in 2005 and again in 2006. Lucy reappeared in 2007 with some extreme damage to her tail as seen in this video.

Damage like this happens from a variety of sources in the white sharks world-but more often than not it happens from other white sharks. Lucy's fate was unknown until this season 2008 when she reappeared back at the island. Apparently the damage she sustained to her tail did not slow down her migration to the Shared Offshore Feeding Area known as SOFA:

Shark Conservation-Bite Back-Great Idea

One of the better and least expensive ideas to hit the shark conservation movement in a while has been the U.K's Bite Back local Shark Sightings Map.

Using Google Maps and peoples input Bite Back is hoping to build a data base of all local shops and fish markets that sell shark products in the U.K. Why is this a good idea? Managing a user generated database such as this allows for effective campaigning on a consumer level that has never been done before. You have to find and identify the targets before you can campaign against them.

For local conservation with sharks this is one of the better ideas we have seen in a while and Kudo's to Bite Back for rolling this out.

Years After Shark Ban Some In Florida See "Shark Gold "

Since a complete ban on commercial shark feeding and diving in Florida back in 2001, Florida has seen the loss of millions tourism revenue.

Safe commercial shark diving is a viable bridge solution to sustainable management of species and a local tourism booster in terms of hotel stays, flights, and local restaurants.

Had Florida adopted and managed commercial shark diving in it's waters by now a minimum of 10 commercial operations would be taking divers from around the planet to safely interact with sharks. Florida is a scuba operation rich state, wherever you find success competition is sure to follow, perhaps a major factor for shutting down commercial shark diving back in 2001.

So, it was with some measure of satisfaction that we noticed at least one operation that was back ending the ban to realize "Shark Gold" in Florida waters. It begins with "one".

As the economy of the United States flounders and local states suffer their worst economic outlooks in the past 20 years it is high time to review commercial shark diving in Florida's waters again. As an "instant tourism resource" Florida has riches off it's shores waiting to be tapped while modern protocols for safe shark interactions have matured to a point where reliable and safe interaction with sharks are all but guaranteed.