Meeting the Media: Be Prepared!

Recently the Voice of Russia posted a story "Meeting a Shark: Be Prepared!"

In the annals of sideways media reportage on sharks this particular article got the attention of one Doc Gruber. His article comments serves as a smart, fact filled template, on effective pro-shark media response.

Hattip:Mike over in Fiji.

Doc Gruber on Sharks

Dear Voice of Russia: Thank you for allowing me to comment on your article Meeting a Shark: Be Prepared. In all my 50 years of professionally studying sharks I do not think I have ever read an article so full of clichés and downright misinformation than reporter Yelena Kovachich has produced. Russia is a nation with many experts on shark biology (for example Dr. Feodor Litvanov flit@atlant.baltnet.ru) so it is clear to me that Yelena did not do her homework.

I will give a few examples but one concern is the swindle that the Sochi Aquarium seems to be running. Training divers on how to respond to sharks is just a scam. The explanation given by your reporter shows that the Sochi program directors know noting about swimming with sharks or shark behavior. They seem to be just pandering to the fears caused by such mythical stories as Jaws which irrationally frighten the public. Then they have the nerve to charge them to play right into the fears that they themselves created. Just one more point: thousands of divers spend tens of millions of rubles annually to swim with sharks and they mainly prepare with cameras!!

Ok—on to some of the misinformation: Yelana states that Divers show people how to hide from them among coral reefs—do you think someone could actually hide from a shark? They can sense you sounds and even the electrical signals from you metallic dive gear!! Why would someone need to hide from a shark?

Your chances to survive if attacked by these creatures are slim to none-- Patently untrue. You chances of surviving an attack are better than 100:1 as the three Russian shark attack survivors learned. On the other hand your chances of being attacked while in the water are about 5,000,000:1.

Sharks can sense tiny amounts of blood - even a single drop - in the water up to 5 kilometers away and trace them back to their source. Again patently untrue. Shark can not detect blood at all. They do sense amino acids present in some kinds of blood but do not seem that interested in human blood. In any case sharks detect dilutions of around 1 part amino acid to 1,000,000 parts of water. This means that if you dilute a drop of blood in 1000 liters of seawater a shark could barely detect it. Can you imagine the amount of water in 5 km of ocean? Pure nonsense.

Three people will be enough to scare a shark away. Where did this number come from? There were more than three people in the water when the unfortunate Russians—all three were bitten.

The largest sharks known - the great whites - dwell along the east coast of the USA. They regularly attack people, confusing them with their top menu selection - sea lions and seals. Here is a sentence with four pieces of misinformation. 1 The larger shark is the whale shark Rincodon typus; 2. White sharks being warm blooded dwell pretty much where they want—inshore to open sea, topical or temperate seas. 3. Great whites do not regularly attack people and even considering the tiny number of attacks, are not even in first place. That dishonor belongs to the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas. 4. Great whites are not confused by people nor is their main food sea lions which incidentally are only found off the west coast of the US, not the east coast. And while they do eat seals and sea lions during the pupping season they also eat many varieties of fish and other sharks.

Need I go on? Here is my thought on the subject: How many citizens of Russia and the Ukraine have enjoyed holidays in Egypt’s Sharm area? Of those how many have been bitten by sharks? Nearly all of them have been exposed to sharks while swimming in the Red Sea with no negative experiences. However when humans enter the sea they enter the realm of the shark as well as myriads of other potentially dangerous species. You take a chance albeit infinitely small when swimming in the ocean. You main concern should be drowning or getting hit by a boat. Enjoy the ocean! Live to the fullest!!

Dr. Samuel H. Gruber
Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
University of Miami 33149-1098
And
Bimini Biological Field Station
9300 SW 99 St
Miami FL 33176-2050
305 274 0628 fax or phone

Today's Sharks: Smart, Tagged, and in Short Supply

Scientific American did a great piece this month with Doc Gruber in the Bahamas on sharks, research and conservation.

Sci Am jumped into the shark conservation arena with Shark Diver on 2008, but this latest article hits all the right notes.

Kudos.

"Many sharks have good learning capacity, which is one way we measure intelligence," says Samuel Gruber, a marine biologist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), who discovered in 1975 that lemon sharks could learn a classical conditioning task 80 times faster than a cat or rabbit. "I was shocked to find that they could learn so rapidly," he says.

Industry "Quote of the Week"

"The world is always in trouble when dilettantes mess with professionals.... "

-Wolfgang Leander August 26, 2009

Doc Gruber-On Commercial Shark Diving

Felix over at the excellent blog Oceanic Dreams posted a return email from Bimini shark researcher Doc Gruber this week.

The email was in response to a TV producer who wanted an expert opinion on the subject of diving with, and feeding, 'dangerous' sharks; specifically, how these activities affect or alter shark behavior, and also whether Dr. Gruber would consider cage-free shark diving a "hazardous" activity. Posted emails like these serve to enlighten our community and help guide future conversations about sharks and television and the industry as a whole. Kudos.

Typically questions like these are stacked for eco-edutainment programming that feature bad things with sharks. Doc Grubers response serves as a template for well reasoned and pro shark thought on the matter. It's hard to fault the opinions of a guy whose entire life has been spent in the company of sharks:

"I feel that shark dives produce several very beneficial outcomes for humans and sharks. First exposing divers to sharks, safely and professionally - and in a beautiful environment will inevitably turn fear into fascination. Quickly these people become ambassadors for shark conservation. Further it produces jobs and income for areas and folks that need the work - especially in an economy such as the Bahamian one.Tourism in the Bahamas is the country's life blood, and sharks are a draw".

Complete Post

New Bahamas Reserve Protects Marine Life From Development-Doc Gruber "Miraculous"

Success in the Bahamas. The CAPO Groups efforts to completely tear down the last mangrove lemon shark nurseries in the Bahamas was met with a storm of protest and seemingly deaf ears from the Bahamian Government who, for all intents, were more interested in the financial side of the new mega resort development in Bimini.

The campaign to save this site was driven by old fashioned pressure, letters, and a very slick series of online video's posted to You Tube and other eco sites. Today the Bahamas announced they will be creating a Natures Reserve in the area. Kudos to the many who started this project and who carried it through to this day, and to Doc Gruber and his team as well. As a template for the creation of other marine sites in the Bahamas this eco challenge was one for the books:

The Bahamas government has created a marine reserve off the island of North Bimini, preserving critical mangrove habitat and a shark nursery that had come under threat from a resort there.

The reserve, which will be protected from most fishing and other "extractive activities," is home to endangered species such as the Nassau grouper and the Bimini boa, as well as a vibrant nursery for lemon sharks.

The decision -- approved by the Bahamas cabinet Dec. 29 but announced last week -- is a setback for the Bimini Bay Resort and Marina, which has been clearing some of the island's mangroves to build a hotel, a golf course, a casino and two marinas, some of which have already been constructed.

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham had initially considered establishing the reserve in the late 1990s, but his party lost power in 2002, and the development proceeded. Ingraham's party won back control in 2007.

Philip Weech, director of the Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology Commission, said the government concluded that the mangroves on North Bimini's North Sound contribute to the nation's fisheries as well as tourism. It is vital for the fisheries in the area to retain the ecosystem in that area," Weech said, adding that the reserve "helps us also to deal with the issue of climate change, flooding, storm surge and the biodiversity that's there."

Under the plan, the government will allow traditional land crabbing in the protected area, along with limited catch-and-release bonefish fishing.

Samuel Gruber, a University of Miami professor who has studied lemon sharks for nearly 20 years as head of the Bimini Biological Field Station, called the creation of the reserve "miraculous."

Gruber and four colleagues published a scientific paper last year showing that dredging in the North Sound for the resort construction in March 2001 had cut the first-year survival rates of juvenile lemon sharks there by more than 23 percent.

Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, who has collaborated with Gruber on his shark research, said the Bahamas' decision is significant because mangroves represent "essential fish habitat, and they're dwindling all over the globe."

The Bimini Bay Resort and Marina did not return calls seeking comment yesterday. Weech said any further development, including the planned construction of a golf course, would be allowed only if it did not jeopardize the reserve.

Demian Chapman, a Stony Brook professor who has also conducted research in Bimini, said the golf course "would be a disaster" because it would damage the reserve's water quality.

"It's just like having a sewage plant next door," he said.

Shark Research at Tiger Beach, Bahamas 2008

Recently Doc Grubers team from the Bimini Shark Lab went to Tiger Beach, Bahamas to conduct some "tagging and tracking"of the locals there.

Is it just us, or in a field of shark researchers, these guys seem to have more fun?

Here' the expedition report, it's a must read:

We anchored up and started to put chum in the water to attract the sharks. It didn't take long to get a good slick of menhaden oil and blood fanning out from the stern in the current. I went inside the boat to prepare my camera gear and wait for sharks to find their way to us. Steve had hung a huge snapper carcass off the back of the boat, so I was confident we would have some hungry customers showing up real soon. Within an hour we had six lemons circling the back of the boat. We started throwing bait in to them and drew them close to the boat with pieces of bait on lines. When they got within range we popped them with a pole spear to take a small skin sample for DNA analysis. More lemons joined the fray until we had approximately a dozen prowling off our stern. As we glanced around Steve and I saw a large dark shadow making a large arc about 100 meters behind the boat. We looked at each other and excitedly shouted "TIGER!!!"