Fiji Leading the Shark Pack - Cool Research

Has it been a decade over there in Fiji? 

Looks like it and now we have research driven data as well.

The kind of data that helps an entire industry grow, the kind of data that Fiji and the Team at BAD are so good at initializing and producing - quality work.

If you thought today's blog post from Fiji and Da Shark was celebratory, you were correct, and congratulations are in order as well for the entire Fiji team who have fearlessly, "done their own thing," and in doing so laid out a template for sustainable shark diving the world over.

We have long been fans of BAD and Da Shark, and no we're really not secret investors, we just have an eye out for excellence in the shark diving community and Fiji consistently fires on all cylinders when it comes to commercial shark diving, conservation, and research.

So Kudos to all for this latest paper and another continued decade of adventures to all:

Opportunistic Visitors: Long-Term Behavioural Response of Bull Sharks to Food Provisioning in Fiji
Juerg M. Brunnschweiler, Adam Barnett

Abstract

Shark-based tourism that uses bait to reliably attract certain species to specific sites so that divers can view them is a growing industry globally, but remains a controversial issue. 

We evaluate multi-year (2004–2011) underwater visual (n = 48 individuals) and acoustic tracking data (n = 82 transmitters; array of up to 16 receivers) of bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas from a long-term shark feeding site at the Shark Reef Marine Reserve and reefs along the Beqa Channel on the southern coast of Viti Levu, Fiji.

Individual C. leucas showed varying degrees of site fidelity. 

Determined from acoustic tagging, the majority of C. leucas had site fidelity indexes greater than 0.5 for the marine reserve (including the feeding site) and neighbouring reefs. However, during the time of the day (09:00–12:00) when feeding takes place, sharks mainly had site fidelity indexes smaller than 0.5 for the feeding site, regardless of feeding or non-feeding days. 

Site fidelity indexes determined by direct diver observation of sharks at the feeding site were lower compared to such values determined by acoustic tagging.

The overall pattern for C. leucas is that, if present in the area, they are attracted to the feeding site regardless of whether feeding or non-feeding days, but they remain for longer periods of time (consecutive hours) on feeding days. The overall diel patterns in movement are for C. leucas to use the area around the feeding site in the morning before spreading out over Shark Reef throughout the day and dispersing over the entire array at night. Both focal observation and acoustic monitoring show that C. leucas intermittently leave the area for a few consecutive days throughout the year, and for longer time periods (weeks to months) at the end of the calendar year before returning to the feeding site.

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 sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Shark Finning Bans by Da Shark

Facts, deeper thought, reality, nooooo!

There's a few folks out there who have had some dim words as of late for Da Shark and his firebrand way of "telling it like it is". Covering a wide range of topics from commercial shark diving to conservation initiatives the reason we like Da Shark and his blog is the simple fact he brings thought to the process.

In a world now dominated with hysterical Facebook conservation postings that offer little in the way of hard facts and drill down analysis, his blog brings the deeper understanding and real world practicality to the issues of the day.

Case in point, this weeks post on shark conservation and shark fin bans. This is about as good as it gets and a great read that will undoubtedly get lost on many who would rather add their obligatory "like" to a picture of a dead shark or "click" a petition that is hard on emotional kick but short on hard facts.

We need more of Da Shark and we are getting it in the form of blogs like Office to Ocean but sadly these are now just "pets tourbillonnant dans les grands vents de la bêtise" in the wider non-discourse out there.

Like it or not, thought matters, as do blogs that spend the time on the issues. You may not like the delivery but for the record, we'll continue to "like" Da Shark and his blog.

USA Today Shark-Free Marinas 2011

The revolution continues with 110 marinas now signed up to be Shark-Free and growing. 

Not mentioned in this article are the many folks world wide who became early adopters of the Shark-Free Marinas Initiative along with the fine folks from Fiji who saw this initiative and adopted it, creating the first actual Shark-Free Marinas in the world back in 2009.

Additionally kudos to Old Bahama Bay Marina in the Bahamas who went Shark-Free in 2010.

USA Today Oct.18.2011

Less than two years after its creation, SharkFreeMarinas.com lists more than 110 marinas and businesses from eight countries — including 78 in the USA— as either shark-free or shark-friendly.

The initiative, organized by the Humane Society of the United States, the animal-welfare grantor Pegasus Foundation and the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, which raises funds for marine-conservation research, works to persuade marinas to either refuse to allow sharks to be landed at their docks or to discourage the recreational killing of sharks. Marinas are registered as shark-free in the first case, shark-friendly in the second.

"This is a way to help the shark population, to save species of fish in our waters," said Tibe Larson, manager of shark-free Bonita Bay Marina in Bonita Springs, Fla.

Bob Hueter, a shark specialist at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., which supports the initiative, said he's not against bringing a shark in once in a while for food. "I've published recipes for shark," he said. But, "too often," Hueter adds, "people bring a shark in, hang it up to show it off, maybe take the jaws, and then dump it."

Without a place to show off a dead shark, fishers are more likely to practice catch-and-release, he said.

"We used to fish for sharks, but I got out of that business close to 20 years ago, when it occurred to me that sharks were being depleted," said Phil Lobred, general manager and partner at H&M Landing, a shark-free sport-fishing landing in San Diego. "Usually, it's the younger crowd who wants to say they caught a shark: It's a macho kind of thing," he said.

In its most recent study on shark depletion, the National Marine Fisheries Service said that recreational fishermen along USA's Atlantic and Gulf coasts killed more than 200,000 sharks per year from 2004 through 2008.

SharkFreeMarinas.com members get signs with their shark-free or shark-friendly status, free ads on the initiative's website and educational literature.

Initiative director Luke Tipple, an Australian marine biologist and TV personality, said he doesn't expect the program to stop the recreational harvesting of sharks. However, he said he thinks it can have a positive impact on an important segment of the shark population: big breeding adults that trophy hunters target.

"They are selectively removing sharks that can contribute to the recovery of their species," Tipple said. "It's not how many sharks we save. It's how many we can protect."

  

Contributing: Lollar and Ruane also report for The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.

Shark Hope Video - First Rate Conservation Messaging

From TheDorsalFin on Aug.30, 2011 at 10:54 am, under Shark Videos.

Shark Defenders have posted the trailer above for a documentary titled “Shark Hope” to their YouTube channel. According to the video description the documentary is a collaboration between Walker Films, Ratu Manoa Rasagitale, the Coral Reef Alliance and Pew Environment Group. The documentary focuses on efforts to create Fiji National Shark Sanctuary.

Kudos to everyone involved in this project, this is first rate shark conservation outreach and messaging:

Tag Innovation? Mike has the Scoop

Mike aka Da Shark has been leading the bandwagon for innovation with SPOT Tags and this week it looks like there's been a breakthrough.

You'll note these well known research tags are drilled into the dorsal fins of sharks and researchers do not know what the long term effect will have on the animals - just yet.

Satellite tags are detectable over broad geographic areas and remotely relay information to satellite arrays. These tags utilize radio transmissions, requiring the tag to have contact with air to send data (hence satellite tags must be externally attached). External attachment makes satellite tags prone to damage and premature shedding. For studies of shark movements, Smart Position or Temperature Transmitting Tag (SPOT tags) are commonly attached to the dorsal fin. SPOT tags transmit a signal to the Argos satellite array whenever the dorsal fin breaks the surface of the water. These transmissions resulted in geo-location estimates with location accuracies that range from a few hundred meters to ‘somewhere on planet Earth’.

More on tags.

Fiji on Predation - Great Stuff

Recently Da Shark was filming his favorite subjects - sharks, when an offscreen actor snuck in and displayed some canny predation moves on a tiny ramora.

The critter in question was a GT or Giant trevally, according to Da Shark these animals are quite the predators in their own right.

Kudos to Da Shark for this Nat Geo quality underwater series.

If you want to shoot something similar you're in luck, Da Shark is one of the owners behind Beqa Adventure Divers and this is his back yard, filled with sharks;)

More here.

Fiji Study - Fiji Template

We have said in the past and for the sake of saying it again, kudos!

Fiji's Beqa Adventure Divers have once again shown the rest of the commercial shark world how to sustainably manage their sharks with ongoing research.

While other sharks sites worldwide such as Playa del Carmen struggle with commercial shark fishing interests, because they did not take the time to roll out an embedded and highly visible research component with their diving programs, Fiji has created a global template - and they are willing to share it.

That's not to say all's lost elsewhere, but the fact remains that too few sites hedge against commercial disasters and embrace ongoing shark research. It works, and we are bound by more than commercial gain to adopt the time and funding necessary to make it happen at our own shark sites.

This morning Da Shark revealed his teams ongoing Bull shark project:

Seasonal and Long-Term Changes in Relative Abundance of Bull Sharks from a Tourist Shark Feeding Site in Fiji

Juerg M. Brunnschweiler, Harald Baensch

ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, Department of Biology, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, Nebraska, United States of America

Shark tourism has become increasingly popular, but remains controversial because of major concerns originating from the need of tour operators to use bait or chum to reliably attract sharks. We used direct underwater sampling to document changes in bull shark Carcharhinus leucas relative abundance at the Shark Reef Marine Reserve, a shark feeding site in Fiji, and the reproductive cycle of the species in Fijian waters. Between 2003 and 2009, the total number of C. leucas counted on each day ranged from 0 to 40. Whereas the number of C. leucas counted at the feeding site increased over the years, shark numbers decreased over the course of a calendar year with fewest animals counted in November. Externally visible reproductive status information indicates that the species' seasonal departure from the feeding site may be related to reproductive activity.

Complete study here.

French - Bon or Damn Fine Film

If you got 40 minutes this week you could be spending it in the company of sharks in Fiji:

Beqa Adventure Divers - Fiji Politiks

One of the best shark diving operations on the planet as far as operational safety, conservation initiatives, and frank industry leadership is in the middle of a "minor bump in the road," typically known as small island politics.

Da Shark posted some details yesterday and we're sure more are to come:

Yesterday evening, after the weekend closure of the courts, Government ministries and law firms, our land lord Lagoon Resort was seized and shut down.

It's obviously about money and has nothing whatsoever to do with us - but as a consequence, we were caught in the crossfire and denied access to our premises, and 20 pre-booked tourists were turned away and could not join today's Shark dive.

It looks like they will be back operating today, and if we know Da Shark he'll find a way to not only own the failing resort in question but in five years will have built a carbon neutral and expanded global shark research station to boot.

Opportunities often come when the storm clouds have lifted.

Here's to fresh breezes in Fiji, let us know how we can help Mike.

Industry Conservation Leadership - Fiji...Again!

A conservation milestone was reached this month on the islands of Fiji as the Shark Free Marinas Inititiative was adopted by the 20th marina here.

Of course this milestone could not have been reach without a Regional Ambassador, Stuart Gow and the resort Matava who have been pushing the SFMI concept all over these islands in a tireless four month sign up campaign.

Kudo's to all in Fiji who, once again have shown industry leadership and who remain a "shining beacon in the hill" for conservation.

Da Shark summed up the progress in his own way at Beqa Adventure Divers Blog:

Check out the list of Shark-Free Marinas!

Yes, that's twenty Fijian operators that have made a commitment for Shark conservation by pledging not to allow any dead Sharks to be landed at their dock. And I just hear that one more has agreed to sign up - and counting!

Is that cool - or what?

This is foremost the direct personal success of Stuart and Matava who have taken the initiative, done most of the leg work and tirelessly promoted the concept.

But this is also a testimony to how much Fiji cares about Nature in general and Sharks in particular.

This is a country that thanks to a visionary network of locally managed MPAs, is well on its way to protecting 30% of its reefs and that has declared all of its waters to be a Whale Sanctuary - and may hopefully once do the same for Sharks.

This is the country that has embraced the International Year of the Shark, with the who's who of conservation, diving and tourism signing up to its local initiative, the Fiji Shark Conservation and Awareness Project. This where local television and the main media support Sharks and where a locally produced pro-Shark PSA has been a roaring success among the indigenous population, many of which revere Sharks as Gods and Guardian Spirits.

And finally, our thanks need to go to Patric and Luke who have come up with this brilliant initiative and have invested their time, energy and money into what is a fabulous example of smart and inclusive conservation!

Stuart tells me that thanks to a generous grant by PADI Project Aware, the signage is being printed and that it will be distributed within the next two weeks.

A big Vinaka Vakalevu to everyone involved!

I'm sure that Dakuwaqa is smiling!

Beqa - Talking Shark Conservation

Becoming a fan of the ongoing shark conservation and industry blogging going on over at Beqa Adventure Divers is as easy as clicking a link. Remaining a fan is as easy as reading this weeks post about shark finning.

Coherent Op-Eds are hard to find in our industry, fortunately for the rest of us there's the BAD Blog who took a smart conversation going on over at Southern Fried Science and jumped all over it:

If this is true, many of us got to seriously re-think our approach to Shark Conservation.

It says that many fisheries, Shark fishing included, are completely supply limited.
In a nutshell, it would mean that the demand for Shark fins greatly outweighs the supply and that consequently, even if we managed to convince a lot of people not to consume Shark fins, it would have little to no effect on the market and thus, on the supply side represented by the size of the Shark fishing industry.

Couple that with the fact that price elasticity for Shark Fins is probably very close to zero (meaning that prices will rise as stocks get depleted, always balancing, or even outpacing the rising cost of having to find increasingly rare Sharks in an increasingly empty Ocean) and that fishermen are perfect examples for the Tragedy of the Commons, and we are faced with a problem of truly epic proportions.

Complete Post

"Da Shark" in Beqa, Fiji - NIMBY

"NIMBY" is an acronym used by the Pentagon during the height of our mis-adventures in Iraq. It's stands for "not in my backyard", and what, you may ask does this have to do with shark diving?

Recently "Da Shark" from Beqa Adventure Divers told a film crew they would not use his operation to access sharks. Essentially the entire shark production was little more than exploitative "shark porn" with a tailor made shark script from L.A.

These scripts are typically produced by non shark people and attempt to bend sharks into the script, not work with the animals as the operators know them. This particular shows script has made the rounds within the industry and has been denounced by everyone who has seen it.

Here is the complete post from Beqa's blog this week.

This is also "Da Sharks" personal take on the industry as a whole. "NIMBY" also stands for industry leadership in this case. As operators we have become the unwitting gate keepers for the ongoing perception of sharks. In the final summation it is up to us to look at our dive sites less as Biological ATM Machines and more as complete shark sanctuaries.

Da Shark:

We're all in this together.

I refuse to believe that the Channels cannot treat predatory Sharks in the very same way they have finally learned to treat the terrestrial apex Predators: as iconic, endangered, fascinating and essential elements of their habitats. It obviously works commercially or they wouldn't be airing those shows - Right?

Fiji would have some wonderful Shark stories to tell, combining huge Sharks with grassroots Conservation and ancestral beliefs, all set against the magical backdrop of the South Pacific - it sure wouldn't take a rocket scientist to weave that into a fascinating narrative.

But alas, all we get is more requests for the same, tired, endlessly re-hashed garbage.
How does that dovetail with the new green image those guys are trying to portray?

Go wonder.