David Shiffman

Here’s how you can tell that the “shark” photobombing kids is actually a dolphin

December 31, 2013December 31, 2013 David Shiffman 10 Comments

When California resident June Emerson snapped a photo of her children playing at the beach, she didn’t expect it to generate international news. Although the kids seem to be adorable, that isn’t what captured the attention of the media. In a wave behind them, you can see the outline of a large animal swimming by (or being “terrifying” and “creeping up on them,” as the Daily Mail called it).

Photo by June Emerson, snarky comments by yours truly

The media, including local, national, and international outlets, wasted no time in calling it a shark. However, as Jason Goldman wryly noted, “not all grey things with dorsal fins in the ocean are sharks.” This animal is almost certainly a dolphin. I asked a dozen shark scientists and a handful of dolphin scientists, and all quickly agreed that this is a dolphin.

As I’m no fan of merely appealing to authority (though I’ll trust someone with years of training over the painful to read comments on many of the news pieces), I’ll share with you how we can tell. First, let’s clean up and brighten the image. Since I am not a photoshop master, let’s borrow a cleaned up and enhanced image from KTLA.

Original image by June Emerson, enhancement done by KTLA. — Original image by June Emerson, enhancement by KTLA.

Even though the image is somewhat blurry (understandable, as June was trying to photograph her children and not the animal behind them,) there are still easily identifiable features that clearly show that this is not a great white shark, but a dolphin.

13 amazing things scientists discovered about sharks in 2013

December 28, 2013December 30, 2013 David Shiffman 5 Comments

Conservation, Science

Other than a certain week in August whose name we shall not speak here, 2013 was a great year for both shark science and the communication of that shark science. There were many important and fascinating discoveries, and many of the world’s top media outlets covered them. Presented here is a list of 13 amazing scientific discoveries made in 2013, in no particular ranking order. To make the list, research must have been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in 2013, and someone else other than me must have also thought it was awesome (i.e. it received mainstream media or blog coverage). In the interest of objectivity, I did not include any papers that I or my lab were directly involved with. Whenever possible, I’ve linked to an accessible version of the paper.

1) A two-headed bull shark!

Citation: Wagner, CM, Rice, PH, and Pease, AP 2013. First record of dicephalia in a bull shark Carcharhinus leucas foetus from the Gulf of Mexico. Journal of Fish Biology 82: 1419-1422.

Brief description: Researchers presented the first case of a bull shark embryo with 2 heads (the mother was caught by a Florida fishermen). In response to the most common question I received about this study, no, this animal would not have survived to adulthood. While this is a cool discovery, the broader significance is somewhat minimal. As I told science writer Douglas Main in an interview about a similar study, “There have been a number of reports of deformed shark and ray embryos in recent years— two heads, one eye, etc. There’s no evidence to suggest these defects represent a new phenomenon or that they are harmful to shark populations as a whole.”

Media coverage highlights: A figure from this study was named one of the coolest science photos of the year by the International Science Times. It was also covered by National Geographic, the Guardian, and TIME magazine.

More than 100 shark scientists, including me, oppose the cull in Western Australia

December 23, 2013December 23, 2013 David Shiffman 10 Comments

Uncategorized

Following the tragic fatal bite of surfer Chris Boyd, the government of Western Australia has again proposed a misinformed policy that would harm populations of threatened animals without making surfers or swimmers safer. By targeting any large shark that swims within a specific area, including endangered species and species not considered a safety risk to humans, this policy is essentially a cull. The family of one of the victims of a fatal shark bite opposes the cull, as do scientific experts, local surfers and thousands of concerned environmentalists around the world.

Dr. Ryan Kempster, shark biologist and founder of Support Our Sharks, provided a brief statement on this issue:

There is no denying that each and every shark fatality is a tragedy and our sympathy is, of course, with the family and friends of the victims. However, based on statistical data, the number of shark related fatalities is negligible when you consider the vast and increasing number of swimmers entering our coastal waters every year.

So often the argument in favour of a cull comes down to the emotional question of who is more important: a human or a shark. Rather, we need to ask the question, will culling sharks actually reduce the risk of an attack?

The answer is likely to be no. In fact, when shark culling was carried out in Hawaii, between 1959 and 1976, over 4,500 sharks were killed and yet there was no significant decrease in the number of shark bites recorded. We need to invest in more research to better understand the movement patterns of sharks and learn more about the cues that entice sharks to bite people in the first place so that we can avoid these situations in the future.

Dr. Kempster also drafted an open letter to the government of Western Australia. This letter, which has been co-signed by more than 100 shark scientists from all over the world (including me), is reproduced below. It highlights why a shark cull is ineffective at reducing shark bites and why culls harm threatened species, in addition to proposing alternative suggestions. Additionally, shark biologist Dr. Barbara Wueringer started an online petition, which currently has over 34,000 signatures.

I urge the government of Western Australia to enact the alternative policies proposed by Dr. Kempster and other experts. Culls do nothing to help make people safer, and they can do great harm to populations of threatened (and legally protected) species.

Submit your short marine science or conservation films to the Beneath the Waves Film Festival

December 17, 2013 David Shiffman

Uncategorized

The Beneath the Waves Film Festival, a student run film festival that brings scientists, filmmakers, and the interested public together, is now accepting submissions for the 2014 season! Any short film (less than 15 minutes) about a marine or coastal topic is welcome, including shorts by professional filmmakers, video abstracts by researchers, student films, and … Read More “Submit your short marine science or conservation films to the Beneath the Waves Film Festival” »

Rest in peace, “ocean addict” Paul Walker

December 2, 2013 David Shiffman 1 Comment

Blogging

Much of the media coverage of the life of Paul Walker, who died tragically this past weekend at age 40, has focused on his successful film career. A rare celebrity who even the gossip-obsessed never heard a bad word about , Walker was beloved by his colleagues. However, he once noted that “I’m an actor, that’s my job but it’s … Read More “Rest in peace, “ocean addict” Paul Walker” »

Check out Musingo, the music trivia app that helps save the ocean

November 21, 2013 David Shiffman

Conservation

This week saw the launch of Musingo, an interactive music trivia app for iOS. The developer, Good World Games, lets users make an impact in the real world through the game apps they play, and Musingo is no different.

Though the app is free, there are opportunities for in-game purchases of additional game tokens, as well as the opportunity to buy the songs you hear through iTunes. 50% of the profits from those in-game purchases are donated to my lab, the RJ Dunlap Marine Conservation Program, where they will be used to help support our many ongoing research projects.

What’s turning dolphins in South Carolina into half dolphins?

November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 David Shiffman 4 Comments

Science

One of the many perks of spending lots of time on boats is that you get to overhear some pretty strange radio conversations. The strangest I ever heard took place in the summer of 2002 in the Gulf of Maine, when the captain of a fishing vessel was calling the Coast Guard to report that he was looking at half of a dolphin swimming around. I was shocked, but the Coast Guard radio operator had apparently heard of this, and replied, “No, sir, that’s a mola mola. It’s a fish, and it’s supposed to look like that.” Everyone on the bridge of the sailing vessel I was on laughed.

I hadn’t thought about the idea of “half of a dolphin” for more than 10 years… until last week, when I saw this photo of an animal which had washed up on Folly Beach, South Carolina, only a few miles from where I used to live (and swim). According to marine mammal expert Wayne McFee of NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal and Ocean Science, this is the second time in recent weeks that half a dolphin has washed up on the shores of South Carolina. Although more than twice the average number of dolphins have stranded in South Carolina this year, seeing two bitten in half ” is an unusual occurrence,” he told me.

What does the new species of hammerhead mean for shark science and conservation?

November 11, 2013 David Shiffman 3 Comments

Conservation, Science

In the year 2000, Dr. William Driggers, now of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Mississippi, was sampling for sharks in South Carolina. Dr Driggers recalls that “at the time I was collecting samples from various species of sharks for life history studies and also collecting tissues for Dr. [Joseph] Quattro’s genetics work.” Dr. Quattro, a professor at the Marine Science Program and Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina, had been working on a project to characterize the population genetics of fish in South Carolina by “working my way down river systems to the coast,” he told me. “Even sturgeons were showing population differentiation, so I thought the next animal would be marine, but estuarine dependent – sharks.” Analysis of the samples Dr. Driggers collected led to a surprising result.

“I was asked “what are the chances that I would misidentify a ‘scalloped hammerhead’ and answered that there was no chance as they are very morphologically distinctive (looks like I was wrong),” Dr. Driggers told me. “I was then informed that genetic sequences indicated that some of the specimens I had labeled as ‘scalloped hammerhead’ were distinctly different from known S. lewini sequences. At Dr. Quattro’s request, I began bringing back whole specimens so they could be archived and morphometric analyses conducted. The first whole specimen that was vouchered and shown to be the new species was collected in Bulls Bay in July of 2001.”

In 2006, Dr. Quattro and his team published a paper entitled “Genetic evidence of cryptic speciation within hammerhead sharks,” showing that there may be a previously-unknown species hiding within scalloped hammerheads. When genetic samples of scalloped hammerheads, great hammerheads, and bonnethead sharks were phylogenetically mapped, the team found an unexpected result. Dr. Quattro, told me that “while doing the population genetics of this animals, we found two divergent genetic lineages within what were morphologically scalloped hammerheads. We gathered sequences and specimens from other known species and didn’t find a match – that’s what got us on the whole cryptic species [defined by Bickford et al. 2007 as “two or more distinct species erroneously classified and hidden under one species name”] thing.”

What can the funniest shark memes on the internetz teach us about ocean science and conservation?

November 8, 2013November 11, 2013 David Shiffman 4 Comments

Conservation, Science

In recent years, some of my favorite ocean predators have started to show up in memes. As part of our tradition of using internet humor to educate our readers, I’ve selected the funniest shark memes on the internetz, and I’ve tried to explain what’s going on in the photos used for those memes. I’m happy to discuss these science and conservation issues in the comments if you have any questions, but my selection of what constitutes that funniest shark memes is obviously correct and beyond dispute.

12) Ferocious planktivore is ferocious

Original image source: Flickr user Yohancha.
What’s going on? This shows a basking shark, the second largest shark in the world, with its mouth open wide. While this gaping maw may appear to be menacing, like whale sharks, the basking shark is a strict planktivore.

10 components of a sustainable shark fishery, and how you can help implement them

November 7, 2013November 7, 2013 David Shiffman 1 Comment

Conservation, Science

In 1999, government officials from all over the world gathered in Rome for a meeting of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s Committee on Fisheries. The Committee meets every two years, but one of the numerous outputs of this meeting was particularly significant, at least for sharks. Based on years of consultation and discussion by experts, the group agreed on a formal set of general principles that should make up sustainable and well-managed shark fisheries.

These 10 principles, part of a larger International Plan of Action for Sharks (IPOA-Sharks) , have helped shape more than a decade of scientific research and management priorities for the chondrichthyan fishes. When properly implemented and enforced, they allow people to use sharks (and rays and skates and chimeras, included in the IPOA-Sharks definition of “sharks”) as a natural resource while keeping populations healthy and allowing depleted stocks to recover.

According to the IPOA-Sharks, a national shark plan should aim to: