Conservation – Page 24 – Southern Fried Science

A photo of people eating a shark is upsetting activists for some silly reason

September 26, 2013September 30, 2013 David Shiffman 42 Comments

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Photo via activist Andy Gray on Facebook, original photographer unknown

A photo of a single thresher shark being served for dinner at a resort is making the rounds among shark conservation activists. The photo, shown on the right, has been shared more than 12,000 times. A petition written in response to the image (in French) has over 1,000 signatures. The story has even made it into the mainstream media. The original caption refers to this scene as “shameful and disgraceful”, while follow-up comments refer to it as “shocking,” “sickening,” “disgusting,” “beyond words,” “shameful,” and “barbaric.” 12,000 shares and a 1,000 signature petition is significantly more outrage than I’ve ever seen for any issue involving a single individual shark. Why, exactly, are activists so upset about it?

It can’t simply be reaction to the death of a single shark. If you believe that no sharks should be eaten ever (or that no animals should be eaten ever), that’s a perfectly valid belief system. You should be (and likely are) aware, however, that the overwhelming majority of the world, including almost all governments, the majority of the scientific community, and many NGOs, completely disagree with you. People have encountered photos of individual sharks being killed before, or pictures of sharks on a menu or for sale in grocery stores, and not reacted this strongly.

It likely isn’t the species of shark in question, either. This shark is either a pelagic thresher or a common thresher, and while both are considered Vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN Red List, they’re common components of shark fisheries. Thresher fisheries in U.S. waters are considered well managed (and that population is only “Near-Threatened”). Some of the comments say that “sharks are an endangered species,” which is nonsense, as there are over 500 species of sharks and most are not even Threatened. Regardless, a single individual animal doesn’t impact the population in any significant way.

Namibian Government Announces 18-month Moratorium on Seabed Mining

September 24, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler

Conservation, Science

Good news came out of Namibia last night, as the government declared an 18-month moratorium on all experimental seabed mining in Namibian waters, pending a more comprehensive environmental impact assessment. Pressure from both environmental groups and the fishing industry ultimately led to this decision. Both sets of stakeholders, as well as scientists and members of the international community, have legitimate concerns regarding the safety of seabed mining. This is the precautionary principal as it was meant to be implemented.

According to Swakopmund Matters, a seafloor mining protest group in Namibia:

The message conveyed by the Namibian decision is bold and clear. It will resonate throughout the world where battles are being fought against actions by mining companies that will harm, if not destroy, important marine areas. It will embolden all those who are standing up for the protection of their marine environments. But even more important, it will demonstrate to other governments that environmental concerns do take precedent over companies’ questionable actions when it comes to their exploitation of the oceans. Furthermore, that the Namibia government is not prepared to be a guinea pig for an untested and unknown endeavor. It refused to let its ocean and marine resources become the proverbial experimental playground.

(Source is a press release e-mailed to me.)

Blackfish: the Science Behind the Movie

September 18, 2013June 11, 2015 Chris Parsons 13 Comments

Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

The Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” told the story of the dolphin hunt in the Japanese town of Taiji. Dolphins there are driven into a shallow cove and killed for meat and other products, with a select few set aside alive for sale to dolphinariums. Many are now saying that this year’s documentary on killer whales (Orcinus orca) in captivity, “Blackfish,” will be nominated for next year’s Oscar. Documentaries rarely get many viewers in movie theaters, but Blackfish, which cost only $76,000 to make and was initially released at only five movie theaters, has already grossed about $2 million nationwide and has been ranked among the 10 best performing nature documentaries, which include “March of the Penguins” and the much vaunted IMAX-friendly “Earth” and “Oceans” documentaries.

Blackfish focuses on the four people who have been killed by captive killer whales, bad corporate behavior by marine theme parks (especially SeaWorld) and the ethics of keeping killer whales in captivity. The film focuses particularly on the story of Tilikum, a 12,000lb male killer whale who was captured from Iceland in the early 1980s, has been living at SeaWorld of Florida since 1992, and to date has been involved in the deaths of three people. His last victim, his trainer of six years Dawn Brancheau, was brutally dismembered after he pulled her into the tank with him on February 24, 2010.

Conserving the Endangered African Wild Dogs of Zimbabwe

September 6, 2013September 6, 2013 Guest Writer

Conservation

Dr. Rosemary Groom grew up in Zimbabwe and has spent the last 12 years working in wildlife conservation in East and southern Africa. She is a dedicated conservation biologist, with a strong belief in the importance of large scale multidisciplinary conservation programs. Rosemary has worked on various different projects, from reptiles to large African herbivores, but for the past five years she has been working on large carnivore conservation in Zimbabwe, for the small, home-grown, hands-on charity The African Wildlife Conservation Fund. The endangered African wild dog is the focal species for the program, but Rosemary also runs the Gonarezhou Predator Project, focussing on African lions. Rosemary is a member of the IUCN canid specialist group and is currently acting as the southern African coordinator for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and Wild Dogs. She has published several papers in peer reviewed scientific journals and currently holds a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Johannesburg.

African Wild Dogs. Photo courtesy Rosemary Groom

African wild dogs are the most endangered large carnivore in southern Africa. There may be as few as 660 packs left in the wild – that’s only 660 breeding females! African wild dogs are beautiful, amiable and charismatic animals with very endearing pups – not the feral domestic dogs that some people believe them to be.

In fact, African wild dogs have their own evolutionary lineage and are more closely related to wolves than they are to domestic dogs.

But unfortunately they are highly endangered and their global population is declining… Threats include habitat loss and fragmentation, wire snaring, disease, human persecution and even predation by lions.

Shark Regulation Updates

August 13, 2013October 28, 2013 Chuck Bangley 12 Comments

Conservation

While Shark Week was raging along, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) approved a new round of shark fishery regulations for public comment. Quite a bit has happened since the last time we covered U.S. shark fisheries here, so it’s time for a bit of a recap before discussing how the latest developments affect sharks and the people who fish for them.

Read More “Shark Regulation Updates” »

A Shark Week 2013 retrospective…with memes!

August 12, 2013August 14, 2013 David Shiffman 7 Comments

Conservation, Popular Culture, Science

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As Shark Week 2013 comes to a close, I wanted to take a look back at which part of my outreach strategy worked (and didn’t work), as well as what I liked and disliked about Shark Week as a whole. Ever since my “15 important shark conservation and management terms explained with memes” post, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to incorporate more internet humor into a blog post, so here goes…

While this Shark Week allowed scientists like myself to reach the public on a large scale, most of the content was...troubling. — While this Shark Week allowed scientists like myself to reach the public on a large scale, most of the content was…troubling.

World’s largest group of shark scientists calls on AP and Reuters to resist using the phrase “shark attacks”

August 5, 2013 David Shiffman 7 Comments

Conservation, Popular Culture

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The American Elasmobranch Society is the world's oldest and largest professional association of shark and ray scientists — The American Elasmobranch Society is the world’s oldest and largest professional association of shark and ray scientists

The American Elasmobranch Society, the world’s largest professional organization of shark and ray scientists, has issued a resolution calling on the Associated Press Stylebook and the Reuters Style Guide to retire the phrase “shark attack” in favor of a more accurate (and less inflammatory) wording that is scaled to represent real risk and outcomes. The AP Stylebook and Reuters Style Guides are reference guides for journalists and editors which focus on, among other things, reducing the usage of inaccurate and outdated terminology. The latest AP Stylebook, for example, had more than 90 new or updated entries which include encouraging journalists and editors to a stop using terms like “illegal immigrant“, “ethnic cleansing” and “homophobia”.

“Shark scientists in the United States and around the world have great respect for the integrity and reporting of the Associated Press and Reuters. We hope they will act on this recommendation and update their style guides to ensure that the public gets the most accurate information in the reporting of these incidents,” said Lara Ferry, President of the American Elasmobranch Society, who sent a formal letter to the AP Stylebook and Reuters Style Guide.

Currently, although “shark attack” is associated with an image of a large shark and a human fatality, the phrase is used by the media as a catch-all to describe any encounter between a human and a shark, even those that don’t result in any physical contact whatsoever. Fully 38% of reported “shark attacks” in New South Wales, Australia from 1970-2009 resulted in no injury whatsoever. This is misleading and facilitates a perception among the public that sharks are more dangerous than they really are, a perception which has negatively impacted shark conservation and management policy.

“The accuracy in media reporting of shark bites and different human-shark interactions is especially important during the kinds of tragic periods we have seen this summer. The public deserves the best information to make sure there is no confusion between very serious and fatal shark bites and minor incidents,” said Christopher Neff, a Ph.D. student at Sydney University.

In a recent paper, Neff and Bob Hueter of Mote Marine Lab proposed a scaled labeling typology to describe human-shark interactions. This typology covers the full range of these interactions, including:

Tweets from the Society for Conservation Biology: Very Large Marine Protected Areas Symposium

July 29, 2013 David Shiffman 1 Comment

Conservation

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The Society for Conservation Biology’s International Congress for Conservation Biology took place from July 21-25th in Baltimore, Maryland. Over 1,500 scientists and conservationists from more than 60 countries participated. Below are selected tweets from the symposium on very large marine protected areas.

Tweets from the Society for Conservation Biology: Marine conservation sessions

July 29, 2013 David Shiffman

Conservation

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The Society for Conservation Biology’s International Congress for Conservation Biology took place from July 21-25th in Baltimore, MD. Over 1,500 scientists and conservationists from more than 60 countries participated. Below are selected tweets from marine conservation (and related) sessions. Talks are in no particular chronological order.

Herring Wars: Quotas, Conflicts, and Climate Change in the North Atlantic

July 25, 2013October 27, 2013 Andrew Thaler 4 Comments

Conservation, Science

Herring and other fish hung out to dry on a trawler in Klaksvík. Photo by ADT.

A small collection of islands in the North Sea, a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, is preparing for war. The European Union, under the auspices of an international fisheries management agreement, is ready to levy heavy trade sanctions against the Faroe Islands, an independent protectorate of Denmark. The Faroes, with a population of less than 50,000, intends to fight these sanctions, defy EU authority, and defend their economic independence. The object of contention is the right to fish Atlanto-Scandian Herring; the driving force behind this dispute–dramatic shifts in fish distribution brought on by warming seas and altered currents. This may be the first international conflict directly attributable to climate change. It will not be the last. Regardless of the outcome, this confrontation will set a precedent for future climate conflicts. Welcome to the Herring War.

Despite their uninspiring name, herring are a rather handsome fish. Atlantic herring, Clupea harengus, are relatively small with a classically “fishy” (fusiform) body shape. They are among the most abundant fish in the ocean, forming schools that can number in the billions. Along with other planktivorous fishes, such as menhaden, that convert phyto- and zooplankton into higher trophic-level biomass, herring are critical to ocean food-webs. They are considered to be among the most important fish in the sea. Herring are the dominant prey species for many large, pelagic predators like tuna, sharks, marine mammals, salmon, and sea birds, among others. Their dominant predator, unsurprisingly, is us.