My 35th birthday is next week, and I am calling upon the forces of the Internetz to help make it an amusing one. As you all know, sandbar shark is #BestShark. This spectacular shark is even the logo of my new consultancy!
I want you to help me celebrate my birthday by creating sandbar shark #BestShark memes and/or artwork! And my favorites will win prizes! Here’s how it works:
Read morEEditors: Jeffrey C. Carrier, Michael R. Heithaus, Colin A. Simpfendorfer. CRC Press, available here.
I can’t imagine a more useful introductory reference guide for new or prospective graduate students starting their career in marine biology than “Shark Research: Emerging Technologies and Applications for the Field And Laboratory”. This book is designed for people who have little to no familiarity with a research discipline but are about to start working in that discipline, a large and important audience that is often ignored by books and review papers geared towards people who are already experts. So many graduate students are told to learn a new research method by reading technical literature that assumes they already know this stuff, resulting in stress and frustration.
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My Postdoctoral research has focused on understanding the causes and consequences of public misunderstanding about shark fisheries management. While scientists overwhelmingly support sustainable fisheries management as a solution to shark overfishing, many concerned citizens and conservation activists prefer total bans on all shark fishing and trade. Some go so far as to (wrongly) claim that sustainable shark fisheries cannot exist even in theory and do not exist in practice anywhere in the world, and that bans are the only possible solution.
There’s an important piece of data that very rarely makes it into these discussions. Amidst the ongoing discussions about whether or not sustainable shark fisheries are even possible, one right in my backyard became the first shark fishery anywhere in the world to be certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.
However, a few years after BC’s spiny dogfish fishery got certified, the certification was quietly withdrawn. I couldn’t find any information in the MSC reports, or in associated scientific literature or government reports, that explained what happened to this fishery, which was thriving until recently. No scientists, managers, or conservation advocates who I asked about this knew exactly what happened to BC’s spiny dogfish fishery.
Read MoreWe have a new paper out today in the journal Aquatic Ecology! Read it here, open access copy here. This is the last paper from my Ph.D. dissertation, and coauthors include my Ph.D. advisor Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, Ph.D. committee member Dr. Mike Heithaus, and colleague Dr. Les Kaufman. It’s called “Intraspecific Differences in Relative Isotopic Niche Area and Overlap of Co-occurring Sharks,” which I think rolls right off the tongue and would make a pretty sweet band name. This research was crowdfunded by the SciFund challenge a few years ago, so thanks again for your support! I want to tell you a little bit about what we did and what we found!
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Cuttings (short and sweet):
Spoils (long reads and deep dives):
Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!
If you appreciate my shark research and conservation outreach, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Any amount is appreciated, and supporters get exclusive rewards!
Cuttings (short and sweet):
Spoils (long reads and deep dives):
Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!
If you appreciate my shark research and conservation outreach, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Any amount is appreciated, and supporters get exclusive rewards!
After months of expert and public consultation, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has announced the draft text of new regulations that will govern land-based shark fishing. It’s mostly very good news that directly addresses most of our concerns!
A review of the problem
Land-based anglers in Florida (those who fish from beaches, docks, and piers) catch large numbers of threatened, protected species, handling them in needlessly cruel ways that likely result in mortality or permanent injury. Anglers are aware that what they’re doing causes harm to certain species and violates some existing regulations. Hammerhead sharks in particular are extremely physiologically vulnerable and need to be released much faster than they are currently being released or else they will very likely die.
(Learn more: see my paper on this subject, my blog post summarizing that paper, an open letter calling for action, an op-ed I wrote about this, a review of the existing rules and how they’re regularly violated, and a years-old blog post describing one problematic incident with land-based shark fishing)
Cuttings (short and sweet):
Spoils (long reads and deep dives):
Please add your own cuttings and spoils in the comments!
If you appreciate my shark research and conservation outreach, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Any amount is appreciated, and supporters get exclusive rewards!
Recently, the Canadian government released the Final Report of the National Advisory Panel on Marine Protected Area Standards. This report is a set of guidelines and goals for the creation of new marine protected areas in Canada, and comes as Canada is hoping to greatly increase the number and quality of MPAs. I reached out to MPA experts and environmental nonprofits to ask what they think.
Barndoor skates were once thought to be so overfished that a highly-publicized paper from 1998 noted that they had been “driven to near extinction without anyone noticing.” One of the largest skates, barndoor skates can reach over 5 feet in wingspan, which is large enough that their diet includes small sharks like spiny dogfish; for a skate, that’s about as close as it gets to charismatic megafauna!
Recently, NOAA Fisheries announced that Barndoor skate populations off the Northeastern United States had finally recovered enough that fishing for them could resume. This move comes after a 2009 NOAA Fisheries report showed that the species had begun to recover enough that they could be removed from the species of concern list, though they remained protected at the time. “This is good news,” Mike Ruccio, a Supervisory Fishery Policy Analyst for NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, told me. “Rebuilding overfished stocks is one of the cornerstones of the US domestic policy on fisheries.”