Southern Fried Science

Florida angler catches (and likely kills) Endangered great hammerhead shark

February 13, 2012February 14, 2012 David Shiffman 158 Comments

Update: The angler who originally caught the shark has responded. Please see below.

On February 5th, while standing on a beach in Miami, a fisherman caught a 14 foot great hammerhead shark. According to his account, “we had it beached within an hour of hooking it. The fish weighed too much her girth was huge. Just the 2 of us wasn’t enough to get it out of the water….We snapped some pictures with our dying camera, measured it at 170 inches and spent the next hour walking back and forth with HER reviving her…it swam off slow and steady”

While this might appear to be a simple case of catch-and-release recreational fishing, it is not. My lab and I are supporters of sustainable catch and release fishing. However, it is important to note that since January 1, 2012, great hammerheads (an IUCN Red List Endangered species) have been a protected species in Florida state waters and have additional legal protections. The Florida code indicates that:

“(1) No person shall harvest, possess, land, purchase, sell, or exchange any or any part of these species:
…(k) Great hammerhead – Sphyrna mokarran.

…(3) “Harvest” means the catching or taking of a marine organism by any means whatsoever, followed by a reduction of such organism to possession. Marine organisms that are caught but immediately returned to the water free, alive, and unharmed are not harvested”

…(5) “Land,” when used in connection with the harvest of marine organisms, means the physical act of bringing the harvested organism ashore” Florida code section 68B-44 (Emphasis mine)

In this incident, the shark was brought ashore. We can infer from the statement “the fish weighed too much her girth was huge. Just the 2 of us wasn’t enough to get it out of the water” that the fisherman attempted to pull it all the way out of the water, but was unable to do so (an important legal distinction) . Instead, he ended up beaching it, bringing it so far out that it could not move or breathe. The angler did not immediately release the animal. According to the angler’s account, it was measured and photographed prior to the attempt to resuscitate it. The shark was not released alive and unharmed. By the angler’s own admission, it took over an hour of resuscitation before the animal was able to even swim away slowly.

“Sharks create oxygen”: A scientific perspective

February 10, 2012 David Shiffman 14 Comments

Conservation, Science

I want to apologize to our regular readers for stating something that should be incredibly obvious. Sharks in in no way connected to the global supply of atmospheric oxygen. If every single species of shark went extinct, there would be a variety of negative ecological effects, but a reduction in the global supply of atmospheric oxygen would not be among them. There is not a shred of scientific evidence supporting the idea that the loss of sharks would affect our oxygen supply- not a single scientific paper, not a single technical report. I’ve attended a dozen scientific conferences focusing on marine ecology or shark biology (including three international conferences) and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone presenting or even discussing this. To the best of my knowledge, not a single person who has authored a scientific paper or technical report supports this idea. Despite the complete lack of any kind of credible evidence, and despite many recent blog posts thoroughly debunking it (see here here here here here here and here ), this pseudoscience just won’t die.

The premise of the sharks and oxygen claim is as follows:

The Ocean Question: What ocean issues would you like to see discussed more this year?

February 10, 2012February 10, 2012 Andrew Thaler 11 Comments

Conservation, Science

This year, during Science Online 2012 I asked 8 marine scientists and ocean advocates the following question: What issues in marine science and conservation would you like to see discussed more in the coming year? The responses ranged from protecting coral reefs to developing better bioinformatic tools. Watch their answers below. httpv://youtu.be/2AhPV5L3LnU

If fish evolved on land, where did they all go? Evolution and Biodiversity in the Ocean

February 8, 2012February 9, 2012 Andrew Thaler 9 Comments

Science

This ray-finned fish was my dinner last night. Photo by Andrew David Thaler

When Carl Sagan described our planet as a “pale blue dot” he was invoking the fact that, despite being called Earth, our world is mostly Ocean. The surface of the Earth is a little more than 70% water and the ocean accounts for 98-99% of our total biosphere–the volume of the planet that can support life. Most contemporary theories point to ocean ecosystems–like deep-sea hydrothermal vents–as the launching point for the emergence and evolution of life. Ocean processes dominate biological interactions, even among unwitting terrestrial actors. A new paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, revisits an old debate about the ocean biodiversity and challenges the notion the ray-finned fishes have a marine origin.

In Why are there so few fish in the sea? the authors begin with the seemingly innocuous question–why are there so many more species in terrestrial environments than in marine environments? From there, they look at species counts, phylogenetic relationships, and diversification rates to determine the ancestral state of the most recent common ancestor of one fish class, Actinopterygii, the ray-finned fish. What they found was that, despite the vastly smaller habitat available for freshwater fish, the number of actinopterygian species found those ecosystems was roughly equivalent to the number of species found in marine systems. In both systems, the dominant groups are relative newcomers on the evolutionary stage, with superorder-level radiations happening between 111 – 150 million years ago. Most surprising, the authors discovered that the most recent common ancestor of actinopterygians may have been a freshwater, not marine, fish. Ray-finned fishes may have invaded the ocean from lakes and rivers.

This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.

February 7, 2012February 7, 2012 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Popular Culture, Science

The last few weeks have seen a groundswell of support for Kevin Zelnio’s #IamScience movement, what began as a single, incredibly heartfelt post and twitter hashtag evolved into a series of personal reflections, a somber music video, and a tumbler and Facebook page, all with the unifying message that there is no traditional path through science, only … Read More “This is what a Marine Invertebrate Zoology class looks like.” »

San Diego Demon? This ain’t my first trip down Possum Trot Road

February 2, 2012February 2, 2012 Andrew Thaler 10 Comments

Popular Culture

Ever since we started tackling marine cryptids (not to be confused with real cryptic species) during our annual Week of Ocean Pseudoscience, people occasionally e-mail me with new “rotting rodent” style monsters. This news story – Behold: The San Diego Demonoid – has been making the twitter and e-mails rounds today. Like the Montauk Monster a few years back, a waterlogged, decomposed critter washed up on a beach, this time in San Diego, and people unfamiliar with what decomposing varmints look like branded it some sort of cryptid. To the right is the uncredited photo (now credited to Josh Menard) that’s been cropping up in various corners of the internet. Like many “cryptic critter” photos leaked to the press, the ones associated with this story fail to show the entire animal or provide any sense of scale. That should be red flag #1 that it is, in fact, a common local resident that is being dressed up to appear more monstrous than it really is.

Now, I’m not a marsupial specialists, but I’ve seen my fair share of possums (Opposums for our non-southern readers) in all states of decay, so those nasty teeth immediately clued me in. Here’s a possum skull (from a Virginia possum) for comparisons:

Aquaculture in North Carolina: White Rock Fish Farm

February 2, 2012January 24, 2012 Bluegrass Blue Crab 1 Comment

Uncategorized

“It’s a mom and pop operation, you could say”, described Ted Davis, owner of White Rock Fish Farm in Vanceboro NC. His smile extended ear to ear as he talked about his farm – and the length he goes to ensure his fish are never stressed on their way to the market. The trick? The farm’s small size – 8 ponds – allow the fish to be harvested by hand, each one receiving individual attention on their way to a shipping container. Another thing that makes his farm special? The hybrid striped bass have personality. They’re scared of tractors, eat more when there’s algae in their pond, and elicit hugs from visiting children.

Mr. Davis takes a whole day, with a helper, in harvesting his hybrid striped bass before they begin their frozen journey to Canada. Other growers, including his neighbors down the road, will spend just hours handling even more fish. Hybrid striped bass, however, bleed when they’re stressed. This turns their flesh and fins red, muddling the prized stripes for the marketplace. Plus, stressed fish release stress hormones and other chemicals that consumers can taste. So the White Rock way is to remove as much stress from the fish’s life as possible.

Core Themes for 2012: Focus on nuance

January 30, 2012January 31, 2012 David Shiffman

Uncategorized

One of the main advantages of blogs is that they allow knowledgeable parties to write in detail about their area of expertise. Information can now come directly from experts to the interested public. This provides an opportunity for those directly involved in an issue to provide context to (and details of) a story. Here at Southern Fried Science, we strive to provide deeper background in topics in which we are knowledgeable, focusing not only on the broader context but on the subtle nuance.

Core Themes for 2012: A renewed sense of wonder

January 27, 2012January 27, 2012 Andrew Thaler 1 Comment

Uncategorized

In the past four years, we took our readers from the remote shoals of the Skeleton Coast to the unfathomable depths of the western Pacific. We touched the coasts of every continent, plumbed the depth of every ocean. Throughout this shared journey, the unspoken, implicit rationale, the very heart of our passion, the reason that any of this is worth doing, is that the ocean is awesome. When I say awesome, I don’t mean awesome in some mundane, biblical sense of fear and wonder when staring into the face of god; I’m talking about something much greater than our fragile brains can comprehend.

We have sailed so far, in these four years, and in this voyage I fear that we have found ourselves, like Ishmael, in “the damp, drizzly November of [our] souls.” The conversation at Southern Fried Science has changed, become more cynical, fatalistic, and driven by threats facing the ocean, rather than reasons why we value it. What once was a sea of boundless potential is now cast in bondage to statistics, benefit analyses, weights and measures, action items. In a way, this shift was inevitable. The ocean is in trouble, the world is changing, and the less we understand it, the more we will lose. Without someone to mark the ledger, to take the bearing, the ship is lost.

Core themes of 2012: Underrepresented issues in marine science and conservation

January 26, 2012 David Shiffman 3 Comments

Uncategorized

One of the many unfortunate consequences of the decline in traditional media has been a reduction in science reporting. The formerly great CNN science unit closed in 2008, followed soon after by the health and science page of the Boston Globe. Alarmingly few trained science journalists are left, and people without proper training are being asked to cover the few science stories that still make it on the air ( I was once interviewed about shark research by the weatherman from CNN’s “American Morning”). With few exceptions, science and conservation stories are no longer considered a priority to the major news networks and newspapers. However, science is no less important to our everyday lives.