Fishing for Great White Sharks - Farallons

Perhaps the biggest shark controversy in the western hemisphere is about to play out this week at the Farallon Islands - and no one it seems, is happy about it.

Just 27 miles off the coast of San Francisco these small, protected islands, are home to some of the largest white sharks in the region.

They are also home to notoriously horrific weather, murky cold waters, and a few die hard shark researchers.

This week the same team who caught and tagged white sharks at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico in 2008 will be at it again, this time at the Farallons.

White shark fishing was banned in California over 15 years ago and it is only with special permits that this team is allowed to catch these animals. Therein lies the controversy. Fishing for white sharks.

The team is lead by Dr. Michael Domeier from The Marine Conservation Science Institute in San Diego. We have been supportive of this team for the past few years. Mainly because they have an established track record for working with white sharks that few others have.

The hooking of any white shark is a traumatic event, but the data that comes back from specialized tags that are drilled into dorsal fins gives researchers a window into the world of the white shark that few other tagging methods deliver. Sat tags are notoriously finicky with a high failure rate. These tags allow researchers minute by minute updates and last for years.

With enough of these invasive tags in place we should, in just a few years time, have absolute and definable small scale and large scale movement patterns of a large sampling of the western pacific white shark population.

We would rather see a professional team do this kind of very specialized tagging work. NOAA, the agency for permit approval, has chosen well. Still many are abjectly opposed to these tags and the manner in which they are applied.

The bigger question is not so much the work that is being done, rather the film crews who will be accompanying the effort. It's a double edged sword when you look at any invasive animal technique and film and television productions.

Short media samples of the Guadalupe production are causing a backlash from the community.

While images like the one featured in this post cannot be helped, the perception that this work is in anyway "fun" are what harm the effort. Media control is, as we have always said, 90% of perception.

Gentlemen, a word of media advice from those who know.

Lose the "Cool Dude Shaka images" standing next to captured white sharks. In the end these images will dog your continuing efforts for years to come.

Let's hope Nat Geo's handling of your tagging program is as serious as the subject matter.

White Shark Cafe - New Film

Synopsis

Great white sharks have captured people's attention for thousands of years. They are mythologized by native groups all over the world - feared and revered in equal measure. But the scientific study of these giant predators is less than 50 years old. The film profiles 2 pioneers in the field - both doing research in California at the Farallon Islands.

It also looks at today's research - greatly improved by advanced technologies that allow scientists to track the sharks migration patterns. Once thought to be coastal animals, biologists have found out they in fact travel thousands of miles. One area they go that is a complete mystery has been dubbed the 'white shark cafe'. Scientists presume they are feeding or mating there.

At the same time, science journalists are trying to affect the negative images great whites have acquired. They are showing images of sharks doing more than eating or attacking - like swimming and migrating. One of these sharks, Omoo, has even acquired his own FaceBook page. Also, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been able to keep a juvenile white shark for more than 100 days, giving the public rare, up close experiences with the great white.

White Shark Cafe-SOFA-White Shark Cafe...

After what has seemed like a decade of tagging and tracking the Marine Conservation Science Institute has published data from it's multi-year white shark study at Isla Guadalupe.

Pete Thomas from the L.A Times got the scoop.

As a side note the battle between TOPP's and the Marine Conservation Science Institute for the naming rights to the mysterious terminus point these animals gather at each season has heated up with MCSI's addition "SOFA" (Shared Offshore Foraging Area).

We'll let you decide which name will stick:

1. MCSI-"SOFA"

2. TOPP-"White Shark Cafe"

Editors Note: We like both.

White Shark Cafe TOPP's

In the news again-the team from TOPP's with more revealing data about the Great Whites of the Pacific. While the focus of this study is mostly on three populations off the California coast, our very own Isla Guadalupe population is on the same migration track.

Thanks in most part to the tracking efforts of Marine CSI we know that Guadalupe populations also join coastal populations off shore each season.

" The sharks spend months at the cafe, an area of about 600 square miles, but nobody knows what they're doing there. Even stranger, they dive up and down more than 1,300 feet every 10 minutes. They repeat the cycle over and over for days, a behavior they don't exhibit anywhere else."

This new data is perhaps some of the most exciting tracking data to come from these populations in a decade of research.