Andrew is a post-doctoral researcher in North Carolina focused on population and conservation genetics in hydrothermal vent communities.
David is a graduate student in Florida. He studies the ecology and conservation of sharks.
Amy is a graduate student in North Carolina studying local ecological knowledge within small scale fisheries.
Chuck is a graduate student in North Carolina focusing on apex predators and how they interact with fisheries.
Lyndell is a graduate student in North Carolina, studying the feeding ecology of cownose rays.
Iris is a graduate student in Washington studying habitat use and feeding habits of juvenile Pacific salmon and herring in Puget Sound.
Michael is a graduate student in Maryland investigating the visual systems of mantis shrimp.
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By David Shiffman, on February 1st, 2011
I’ve been critical of President Obama’s policies concerning science, technology and education in the past. I think he uses a lot of great-sounding rhetoric, but I have yet to see very much in the way of actual results. Despite lofty promises about climate change, we remain without a cap-and-trade system or any sort of meaningful response plan. To make things worse, the administration recently fired their primary adviser for climate change policy. Is all hope lost? Perhaps not.
Continue reading Ethical Debate: Clean Energy and the State of the Union
By David Shiffman, on November 8th, 2010
One of my favorite parts of being a scientist is attending conferences. In addition to getting feedback on your research from leaders in your field and staying current on other people’s work, conferences are a lot of fun. When the daily sessions end, it’s basically a bunch of cool people who share your interests looking to have a good time after a long day. While most people (including myself) care more about the knowledge transfer than the celebrations (exhibit A- I’m going to a conference in Minnesota next summer) , I’ve known more than a few people who have chosen not to go to certain conferences because the host city was “boring”. This makes it all the more surprising that the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), one of the largest scientific societies in the United States, announced that their 2011 conference would be held in Salt Lake City and not New Orleans (as had originally been proposed).
 Guess which city this celebration took place in? Image from NowPublic.com Continue reading Ethical Debate: Evolution, the big easy, and putting your money where your mouth is
By David Shiffman, on October 19th, 2010
Two of the strongest environmental laws in the world are the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Among many other statutes, these laws make it a Federal crime for anyone to harass endangered marine mammal species such as the West Indian manatee. By the accepted definitions of the word “harass”, this means that people cannot swim with and certainly cannot touch a manatee. However, at Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, visitors can do both of these things- and it’s totally legal!
Continue reading Ethical debate: Can an endangered species be a business partner?
By David Shiffman, on June 1st, 2010
While attending last year’s American Elasmobranch Society conference, I was asked to fill out a survey concerning my views on lethal shark research. My response, along with those of many other participants, has now been analyzed and written up into a new essay in the Journal of Conservation Biology. Michelle Heupel and Colin Simpendorfer argue that lethal sampling of some individual sharks is sometimes necessary in order to get the data needed to protect those animals’ entire species. However, attitudes about conservation in general and sharks specifically are changing, and many (including these authors) feel that this is starting to affect marine biology as a science.
Continue reading Ethical Debate: Killing sharks for science?
By David Shiffman, on April 29th, 2010
 Jean-Michel Cousteau with an orca. Photo credit: Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society The death of Sea World trainer Dawn Branchaeu revived an old debate over whether it is appropriate to keep orca whales in captivity. Many people are calling for all captive orcas to be set free, but I continue to support aquariums because of the roles they serve as educators and conservationists. Although several readers have pointed out that the sea world incident itself would make for a solid ethical debate, I am instead going to take you back more than 15 years to a movie that started this whole movement: Free Willy.
Continue reading Ethical Debate: Should we have freed Willy?
By David Shiffman, on April 16th, 2010
Most marine conservationists and environmentally conscious citizens believe that fisheries bycatch is a major problem that needs to be solved soon. In most cases, they are correct, but an
interesting paper from Nature shows that bycatch can sometimes be good for certain species. Consider the case of the Great Skua.
 Image from BritishEcologicalSociety.org The Great Skua is a large predatory seabird that lives in northern Europe. In the past, it has been known to feed on many smaller local seabird species, including the Leach’s Storm Petrel, the Northern Fulmar, the Northern Gannet, the Lesser Black-Backed Gull, and the Herring Gull. In the last few decades, Great Skua populations have increased tremendously.
Ordinarily, when the population of a predator increases, the populations of its prey decrease. This doesn’t seem to be the case among populations of the seabird species in northern Europe. How can this be?
The answer to this apparent ecological enigma has to do with fisheries bycatch. The oceans around northern Europe support many large-scale fisheries, such as the sandeel fishery. Like most large-scale fisheries, the sandeel fishery has a significant amount of bycatch (fish that were caught merely because they were swimming near the sandeel) associated with it. Since the fishermen only have a permit to sell sandeel, the bycatch species are dumped overboard…where they are devoured by Great Skua.
In other words, Great Skua have found a new steady source of food. Great Skua populations have increased without a decrease in the populations smaller seabirds that they ate in the past.
Modern sentiments, however, have turned against bycatch. Efforts to reduce bycatch in commercial fisheries are underway in many countries worldwide. What will this mean for the seabird communities of northern Europe?
Well, it’s possible (and for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll assume it will definitely happen) that without their new source of food (bycatch dumped over the side of fishing vessels), Great Skua will return to eating their previous prey- the smaller seabirds of northern Europe. Since there are many more Great Skua than there used to be, this would be very bad news for the smaller seabirds in the area, and could easily make several seabird species endangered.
The question for this week’s ethical debate is simple: Do you think that we should continue with efforts to reduce bycatch in Northern Europe even if it means that local seabird species will become endangered?
I should note that the authors of this paper stated that “it would not be appropriate to maintain current rates of discarding for the sake of seabirds”.
Votier SC, Furness RW, Bearhop S, Crane JE, Caldow RW, Catry P, Ensor K, Hamer KC, Hudson AV, Kalmbach E, Klomp NI, Pfeiffer S, Phillips RA, Prieto I, & Thompson DR (2004). Changes in fisheries discard rates and seabird communities. Nature, 427 (6976), 727-30 PMID: 14973483
~WhySharksMatter
By David Shiffman, on April 1st, 2010
 Sushi! Image from OpenClipArt.org Bluefin tuna are some of the most endangered fish in the sea. Prized by the sushi industry for their delicious flavor, populations of bluefin have declined precipitously in recent decades.
They also may be the first species of fish to be driven to extinction by commercial fishing. Normally, when populations of fish get low, it isn’t profitable to fish for them anymore- thus they are not driven to extinction. However, a single bluefin tuna can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it is still profitable to fish for the last one.
Continue reading Might as well eat ‘em: A semi-serious April Fool’s Day ethical debate
By David Shiffman, on March 19th, 2010
 WhySharksMatter beneath a whale shark Following the deaths of two whale sharks in 2007, many animal rights activists harshly criticized the Georgia Aquarium for keeping these animals captive in the first place. I recently visited the Georgia Aquarium for blogger day, and the aquarium’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Bruce Carlson agreed to answer my questions about their whale sharks. I know that many of you have strong opinions about shark issues, but I wanted to provide the Georgia Aquarium’s side of the story.
Continue reading Ethical Debate: Captive whale sharks
By David Shiffman, on February 25th, 2010
 Image from HumaneSociety.org I am, in general, a supporter of animal rights. Animal abuse sickens me, and I really believe Ghandi’s famous quote that “you can judge a society by how it treats its weakest members”. That said, while it’s disturbing to see a rabbit which has gone blind from exposure to a potential new shampoo, I’d rather have a rabbit go blind than a human child. More importantly, while it is troubling to infect a chimpanzee with a disease in order to study how to cure that disease, such research unquestionably saves human lives. That’s why I was surprised to learn about the Great Ape Protection Act.
Continue reading Ethical Debate: Animal rights, human health, and government understanding of science
By David Shiffman, on February 18th, 2010
 Image from OwlPages.com This month’s Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment has a brief article about a new proposed conservation strategy that seems perfect for a Southern Fried Science ethical debate. Northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) are one of the most famous endangered species in the United States. While solutions to the destruction of their habitat by logging have been debated for years, a new threat has been recently identified- encroachment on their limited habitat by another species of owl (the barred owl, Strix varia). Some conservationists now believe that we need to kill barred owls to protect spotted owls.
Continue reading Ethical debate: saving owls by killing owls?
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