Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
The most recent issue of the College of Charleston magazine came out this week, and it features an article about sharks by yours truly! Check it out below. Suggestions and critiques are appreciated. I know it’s hard to read- here is a link to the online article.
Read More “WhySharksMatter in College of Charleston magazine” »
This post is part of the Crowdsourcing ConGen project. Crowdsourcing is the process of opening up a resource to a community for input and contributions. Throughout the coming year I’ll be posting manageable pieces of this document for the audience of Southern Fried Science to read and review. Please visit the main post for an overview.
“I have never done anything useful. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world.” ~ Godfrey Harold Hardy
The simplest model for a population is one in which the frequencies of alleles and genotypes remains constant from generation to generation. Under this model, there are no outside forces influencing selection, there is no tendency for any allele or genotype to be favored over any other, diploid alleles will recombine randomly in accordance with Mendelian inheritance. A population that behaves this way is said to be in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. This almost never happens.
Read More “Crowdsourcing ConGen – Populations in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium” »
The following was posted at the old website on January 5, 2010. It is reposted here as a response to the question “Why would you encourage people to consume any kind of seafood when bycatch is always an issue? Would it not be better simply to avoid any seafood whatsoever when we can live perfectly healthy lives without?” raised in Reader Mail: Aquariums, seafood, and my shark documentary. Old comments have be stripped but can be found at the original post here.
The Guilty Planet blog has a novel proposal for the New Year: Boycott Seafood. No, not just unsustainable seafood, not just environmentally destructive seafood, ALL seafood.
Is it possible to mistakenly support a cause you disagree with? Well, theoretically no, but it’s really all in the name. There are a number of groups out there with clever titles, but are they misleading? I’ll leave the obvious ones like the Discovery Institute and American Enterprise Association for Public Policy Research to your Google prowess, but here’s a great example from my personal experience: the Coastal Conservation Association.
What might at first appear to be a group supporting conservation biology and ringing the bell for endangered species and receding wetlands is really a group designed to advocate for recreational fishing at all three levels of our government: local, state, and national. Their national website is fairly straightforward about this mission, but it is not so obvious when they’re testifying at a state fisheries meeting.
The 15th United Nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species is meeting this week in Doha, Qatar to revise the current list of species protected under international trade agreements. On the proposed list for this year are Blue Fin Tuna, Nile Crocodile, Polar Bears, eight species of shark, and an entire family of red … Read More “Commercial Interests Trump Endangered Species” »
One week after the world premier at the Benthic Ecology conference’s Beneath the Waves Film Festival, I am pleased to announce that my new shark conservation mini-documentary, “four things everyone needs to know about sharks”, is now available on YouTube.
Check it out here:
If you are an educator, the movie is intended to be part of a lesson plan about shark conservation. I have created a middle school version, a high school version, and a college version. Contact me at WhySharksMatter AT gmail DOT com with the subject “Shark Lesson Plan” and I’ll send you what I have, or we can discuss making a custom lesson plan that suits the specific needs of your class.
If you are not an educator but care about sharks, the movie can be a stand-alone way to educate your friends, family, coworkers, classmates, etc.
Please let me know what you think about the video by commenting on this blog post.
Thanks to all of my photographer and musician partners in this project!
Check out their websites:
The latest news out of CITES isn’t encouraging. Marie Levine, President of the Shark Research Institute, is attending and made the following statement: “Animals did not fare well at CITES today. The USA’s bid to have the polar bear uplisted from Appendix II to Appendix I was defeated, as was Egypt’s attempt to have the … Read More “CITES update: Bluefin and crocodiles and polar bears? Oh my!” »
Seriously, what the fuck? A proposal to protect the Atlantic bluefin tuna prized in sushi was rejected at a UN wildlife meeting today. The decision was reached after Japan, Canada and scores of poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds that banning exports of the fish would devastate fishing economies. Monaco introduced the proposal … Read More “Bluefin tuna fails to make UN’s list of protected fish” »
The first shark conservation proposal at CITES has been defeated. This was not a proposed appendix II listing that I wrote about yesterday, but rather a nonbinding measure that “called for increased transparency in the shark trade and more research into the threat posed to sharks by illegal fishing” (from the AP article linked to above). If a non-binding measure that doesn’t actually ban any trade in shark products can’t pass, that’s not a good sign. Why did some countries vote against this non-binding measure to support research and increase transparency?
Read More “Shark conservation is not off to a good start at CITES” »
The 15th meeting of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as CITES, has begun, and representatives of 175 countries are meeting in Doha, Qatar. CITES rules have the power to make international trade of plant and animal species illegal, which has enormous significance for their conservation. 8 shark species have been proposed for CITES protection under appendix II- oceanic whitetip sharks, porbeagle sharks, spiny dogfish (commonly used for fish and chips in the UK), dusky sharks, three species of hammerheads (great, smooth, and scalloped), and my study animal the sandbar shark.