Tagged white shark moves inland?

A west coast white shark pup tagged and released earlier this year has been tracked into the Sea of Cortez.

As recent data sets would suggest the tag is now moving inland at a high rate of speed. Researchers say this is just preliminary data and that the shark is probably still in the water and doing fine.

Or...the tag is currently on the antenna of a fisherman's truck driving back to the coast. (click image for larger view)

Full news report here. As always we'll keep you updated. On an amusing side note this animal went from being a US citizen to a Mexican national in less than three weeks.

Shark Diving-Tourism Analysis

This mornings Slate.com features one of the best written looks at shark tourism we have seen in the past few months. A first person account (Elisabeth Eaves) of Roatans Waihuka Diving

Here's an excerpt:

A fisherman on Roatán can get about $40 for one of these sharks, or $720 for 18. Waihuka gets about $80 per diver, so $960 on this 12-customer dive. They can charge $960 for those same sharks again and again, and the sharks don't have to die: The resource is renewable. Assuming similar overhead (a boat, an outboard engine, gasoline), shark-watching is more profitable for the locals than shark-fishing, and it conserves nature rather than decimating it.

Doesn't that make shark diving a good thing? The rosy view of eco-tourism would say we should exploit shark viewing to stop shark fishing. Hire the fishermen as dive masters, and you've got a win-win-win for locals, tourists, and sharks. Shark-watch businesses further argue that the more people have happy encounters with the animal, the more public support there will be for researching and protecting it. (The whale-watching industry plausibly advances a similar argument.

Cage diving doesn't make sharks aggressive

In a landmark study South African researchers have come to some startling conclusions about cage diving, bio attractant and great whites.

As a shark diving company who's crews spend hundreds of hours observing these animals on site each season-the conclusions from South Africa are what we have come to suspect for a few years now...white sharks and cage diving do not equal "killer sharks".

This study also backs up a 4-5 year study done by Rodney Fox in Australia to answer similar bio attractant questions at his white shark site.

The white shark tagging and tracking efforts of CICIMAR's Mauricio Hoyos at Isla Guadalupe has uncovered similar data-although his project was not directed specifically at the chumming issue.