Western Australian Shark Cull. Make a difference!

The Australian EPA is doing a Public Environmental Review (PER) and is soliciting comments from the public. This is our chance to be heard, but please consider a few things, before you write your response.

As usual, "DaShark" has beat me to it and written an excellent blog on the subject. Here are a couple of things he mentions.

During the first period of public review, here is what happened.

The 14 week trial attracted intense media and community interest. 
The trial generated: 

• 765 separate articles on sharks in local, state and national newspapers 
• 1,100 radio news bulletins on sharks (Western Australia) 
• 850 radio talk back comments on sharks (Western Australia) 
• 290 television news items on sharks (Western Australia) 
• 286,000 emails and letters to the Department of the Premier and Cabinet (DPC) - a significant number of which were pro forma emails
• and a significant number of postings on Twitter and Facebook, some of which were offensive and contained personal attacks on members of the Government and staff involved with the program.

And the net result of that onslaught of unsolicited appeals, petitions (= pro forma emails), opinions and abuse?

A big fat zero.

So why did all that media attention, written petitions and postings on social media have no effect on their decision? Well, it did have an effect. Probably not the effect you were hoping for, but an effect nonetheless. 

The government is stating: 

The 14-week trial generated “offensive and contained personal attacks on members of the Government and staff involved with the program” on Twitter and Facebook.
Supporters said they had “no choice but to stay quiet due to the level of abuse and vilification received”, describing the level of personal attack and social media postings as “unacceptable”.
“The Government is now more acutely aware of the level of abuse that was directed towards supporters of the program and the reasons for so many staying silent,” 

source 

So basically, they blame us for why, what they claim is the silent majority, has stayed quiet on the subject. They are not kidding, that's what they believe. If we want them to listen to us, we have to mind what we say and how we say it.

Here is DaShark's advice.

Both the postulated silent majority and the anti-cull faction have an equal opportunity to have their voices heard - and I sure hope that the latter is not only composed of social media slacktivists and agitators but that instead, it will make a vigorous attempt at turning things around by fielding rational arguments.
Not really convinced that the WA government will listen - but along with the federal assessment, it's the best opportunity we got.

Recommendations here.

Please make your submission - the clock is ticking!

I could not have said it any better myself. Here is the link with all the information on how to submit your comments. Let's make our voices heard! 

Cheers,

Martin Graf

CEO

Shark Diver

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at staff@sharkdiver.com.

10 ft. white shark being eaten? Mystery solved!

Yesterday we talked about the international headlines of "Great white shark being eaten by sea monster".

Here is a response by CISRO, the organization who placed the tag on the shark in question.

When we looked at its data there was a period of approximately three weeks just before the tag surfaced where the temperature recorded was higher than the surrounding sea, but where the tag continued to ‘dive’ in a pattern consistent with a white shark. During this time, the tag failed to record light. Data before and after suggest the tag was functioning normally. The temperature recorded for these three weeks was consistent with that of the core body temperature of a white shark but too low for something like a killer whale.

They go on to explain, what they think had happened.

At one point the shark that had eaten the tag dived to a depth of 570 m – this is not unusual for white sharks – it is normal behaviour. This dive took place about one week prior to the tag recording the higher temperatures (not immediately before as some have reported) and the two events are not related.

All evidence suggests that the tag had been eaten by another white shark. We have seen white sharks biting each other before, sometimes removing pieces of tissue in the process. We concluded that this was the most likely explanation – One shark bit off a little more than he could chew and ended up swallowing the tag. 

We never concluded that the 3m shark was consumed by another much larger shark.

Yesterday I questioned the "scientists" conclusion, that a sea monster ate the shark. Now we know that there were not even any scientists that concluded that, it was simply the filmmaker ignoring what the group who placed the tag in the first place had to say. Now that's something you'd expect from a Sci Fi channel production, not a Smithsonian "documentary"!

Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO Shark Diver


About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at staff@sharkdiver.com.

Great White Shark eaten by even bigger Great White Shark?

 The story that a tagged great white shark has been eaten by another great white shark is making headlines around the world. Various news outlets like UPI are reporting that "Australian scientists are searching for a "mystery sea monster" that likely devoured a nine-foot-long great white shark they'd been tracking." and People magazine is saying  it was a "colossal cannibal great white shark"  and even stating that it's size is "estimated at 16 feet long and over 2 tons"

Now what has lead these "scientists" to this conclusion? In the following video they say that the shark suddenly plunged to 580 meters, about 1900 ft., where the temperature of the tag went from 46 degrees farenheit to 78. (BTW. the tagged shark shown at 2:12 in the video, is actually one of our Guadalupe sharks) People magazine states that "They (the researchers) end up coming to the terrifying hypothesis that a "colossal cannibal great white shark" – estimated at 16 feet long and over 2 tons – snacked on his lil' buddy. The scientists offer several suggestions as to how this nightmare become reality: Perhaps this was a territorial dispute, or maybe the larger shark was so hungry it was driven to attack another of its own species" 

Wow, that is amazing! They not only know that this shark has been killed, they also know what killed it and even estimate the size of the killer. How the heck did they do that? Estimate the size and species of a predator by the temperature of a tag. And here I was, finding it incredible that another guy claims to be able to do that by the shape of a dorsal fin.

So let's look at a few facts. The great white sharks do indeed maintain a body temperature of a few degrees above the water temperature. According to Elasmo-research.org, great white sharks maintain a muscle temperature of 7-9 degrees f, and a stomach temperature of 13-25 degrees f above water temperature. The scientists claim that the tag could not have fallen off, because it would have recorded a lower temperature first, before the jump to the higher temperature, after it was eaten. So if that were true, that would put the maximum temperature inside a great white shark stomach at 64 degrees and not 78. 

Since the tags we are talking about here, are external, they record the temperature of the water and not that of the sharks muscle. Therefore, they would not have recorded a lower temperature after falling off. The fact that it plummeted straight down to 1900 feet is a further indication that the tag fell off. If another shark had attacked this 9+ ft great white, there would have been a struggle and they would not just have plummeted down. Also, the typical attack behavior of a great white shark is to strike and let the prey die, not fight with it and take it down deep.

Having watched great white sharks at Isla Guadalupe for 13 years, I've seen them fight, bite each other and noticed that the smaller sharks tend to stay away from the bigger ones. Those actions always seemed to be a way to establish the pecking order and not an attempt to kill and eat the other shark. As a matter of fact, when we encountered a dead shark a number of years ago, all the other sharks stayed away from the area for a while, indicating that they weren't comfortable being in an area with a dead one of their own.

I have no problem saying that I have no idea what happened to this shark, but for the scientists to state that a "colossal cannibalistic shark" ate this individual, simply because of the temperature recording of a tag, is not very scientific at all.

This whole thing happened 9 years ago. So why is this all over the news now? Well, according to People, The Smithsonian Channel repackaged an Australian documentary called The Search for the Ocean's Super Predator into another doc called Hunt for the Super Predator.

So all this is done to promote a "documentary" by the Smithsonian channel. Why am I not surprised that after "Nat. Geo" and "The Discovery Channel" they are just going after sensational headlines to boost their ratings as well. Let's just scare the heck out of people by letting them believe that there are monsters lurking in the Ocean. It's not like people don't have an irrational fear of sharks already. It's not like they are killing sharks based on this irrational fear. No, they need to stoke that fear so that they can sell their stupid "documentary". Damn the consequences!

Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO
Shark Diver

 

 

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at staff@sharkdiver.com

Sharkfishing tournament. A silver lining?

They just posted the results of the 2014 Ocean City Shark tournament here

The bad news, they killed 15 sharks, 7 blue-, 6 mako- and 2 thresher-sharks.

The good news, they released 107 sharks. The prize money for the release division was slightly higher than that of the weigh in (kill) division.

releasing a shark

I don't like shark tournaments, I love the sharks and want to protect them and not have them killed by fishermen. Many conservationists feel the same way I do and are working to get these kinds of tournaments eliminated.

Instead of demonizing the fishermen and questioning their character, like a lot of others do, I want to acknowledge that the organizers are making an effort to lessen the impact those tournaments have on the shark populations. It has always been Shark Diver's position to try to work with fishermen, to educate them about the problems associated with shark fishing and get them to at least, practice catch and release, if not stop fishing for sharks altogether. That was how the shark free marina initiative got started.

Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO Shark Diver

About Shark Diver . As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives,
Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at staff@sharkdiver.com.