The Dorsal Fin

According to The Boston Globe, data from a third great white shark tagged last September in Massachusetts waters is now being transmitted. Data from two other great white sharks tagged in the same area revealed that the sharks traveled 1,000 miles south over a two-month span and are currently in Florida waters.

Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts’ Division of Marine Wildlife said the sharks “hugged the coast” during their travels, unlike similarly tracked great white sharks in the Pacific, who often journey far offshore. Skomal also noted that the sharks reached depths of 1,500′ during the migration.

UK’s The Sun has managed to run a shark-related news story without going over the top with the sensationalism. The article, Shark Angel, briefly describes the efforts of Julie Andersen of Shark Angels. Unfortunately, it seems that somebody dropped the ball on writing the captions for the photos that were included in the story.

This photo (click the link, as I don’t have the rights to display it here) is accompanied by the caption, “Saved … Shark Angel frees creature from net.” Sadly, the “creature” in the photo, a sand tiger shark, appears well past the point of saving and looks to be quite dead. In fact, what appears to be the same shark can be seen in the Shark Angels video below.

Photo caption blunders aside, I have to give credit to The Sun for taking a step in the right direction, when it comes to steering away from the fear angle and featuring a story about conservation.

Australia’s The 7pm Project has recently posted the following feature on declining shark populations on YouTube.

The video addresses the effects of overfishing and finning on shark populations. Unfortunately, the feature is plagued with the “magic number”, claiming 100 million sharks are killed each year, which is not backed by any solid research (research-backed estimates put the number in 26 million to 73 million range, which is staggering in its own right).

Magic numbers aside, the feature does bring up valid points, including how the media has helped to contribute to misconceptions about the dangers of sharks toward humans. Ian Gordon points out that most people know very little about shark behavior and biology. He also notes that he has been around sharks for 30 years and if sharks were as dangerous as many people believe, he would likely be dead by now.

A pirated version of Blue Sphere Media’s Unnatural Selection – Shark Finning on the Frontier video recently popped up over on YouTube. I hadn’t seen this video before, so I tracked the original down through Blue Sphere Media’s website and their Vimeo channel. The video seen below features some powerful imagery of finned sharks. From a production standpoint, the video gets an A+. Unfortunately, the video suffers from “magic number syndrome” (both the “100 million” and “90% decline” estimates make appearances in the video). The footage in the video alone is enough to make a strong message about shark finning, but when accompanied by “statistics” that have no scientific evidence behind them, the message becomes diluted. The problem of shark finning is real, as evidenced by the footage in the video, so why not use some “real” numbers (not to be confused with the real numbers you learned about in 5th grade during Mrs. Walker’s math class) to accompany this footage?

Warning: Video contains footage of discarded finned shark carcasses and severed shark fins.

Scott Tucker, whom I can only describe as the Mr. Rogers (minus the cool puppets like King Friday) of public access wildlife television, was recently interviewed on Connecticut’s WTNH8 about his “Last Blue Shark” program and shark conservation, in general.

Tucker addresses the shark fin industry and the impact that is having on global shark populations. Tucker suggests ways that the audience can contribute to shark conservation efforts. Unfortunately, while discussing the shark fin industry, Tucker not only references the “100 million” magic number but also goes on to claim that 100 million is a conservative estimate and that “they believe it is even more.” While I certainly support Tucker’s good intentions, I believe that using “statistics” that have no scientific research behind them is potentially more harmful to shark conservation efforts than helpful. Within the past few months, the unsubstantiated claim of “100 million shark killed annually” has been used as a platform to discredit shark conservation efforts. In order for conservation efforts to be taken seriously, those promoting these efforts would be better served using the estimate of 26 million to 73 million sharks killed commercially each year, which is backed up by research (Clarke et al. 2006)

In addition to discussing shark finning and promoting conservation awareness, Tucker also plugs his latest episode of Expedition New England, “Last Blue Shark.” Expedition New England is a public access wildlife show which airs throughout Connecticut, as well as a few other localities (including Melbourne, Australia, believe it or not).