The Dorsal Fin

Australia’s Nine News Today morning show was running a story about a reported “lake shark” sighting in Evendale Lake, on Australia’s Gold Coast, when a live interview took an unexpected turn. Reports of the sighting of a “fin, possibly belonging to shark” resulted in the lake being closed to swimmers, and area “fishing expert” Paul Burt was participating in a live interview when things took a turn for the worse. According to the video information, the duck was unharmed.

HowItShouldHaveEnded.com (known for “re-writing” popular movie story lines) recently parodied “Jaws” and added it to their YouTube channel.

If “Jaws” had played out like this, it probably wouldn’t have been a summer blockbuster and generated all the often-times unnecessary fears of sharks at the beach. It probably also wouldn’t have generated all those awful sequels, either.

WARNING: Video features coarse language.

A video posted by YouTube user Mikah1992 featuring what is described as a 12-14′ great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) eating a smaller 6′ blacktip shark (Carcharhinus limbatus) has been gaining a lot of views on YouTube over the past two weeks.

Part of the “viral appeal” of the video is likely the reactions of the guys on board the boat when the great hammerhead shark comes in for a free meal. According to the video description, the blacktip shark had been hooked for about 15 minutes prior to the arrival of the great hammerhead shark, which was described as being larger than the boat that the video was filmed from.

According to the Coventry Telegraph, London’s Tate Moden art museum will feature Damien Hirst as its star exhibitor in 2012 when the summer Olympics come to London. Hirst is known for encasing various species of animals in formaldehyde and presenting them as works of art. Perhaps, one of his most famous works is “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living,” which is essentially an encased tiger shark carcass suspended in formaldehyde.

“The Physical Impossibility of Death…” was commissioned for £50,000 in 1991 and was completed in 1992. the Coventry Telegraph reports that it was later sold for about £6.5 million. A 2006 New York Times article reports that the original shark had begun deteriorating when the item was sold. Hirst volunteered to replace the shark and enlisted the help of Oliver Crimmen, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London, to better preserve the second shark, which was housed in the original case.

The two tiger sharks used in Hirst’s work were caught by Queensland fishermen, who were hired by Hirst.

According to an article in The Telegraph, research performed by a team from the University of Western Australia and the University of Queensland has revealed that the 17 species of sharks (which included bull sharks and tiger sharks) involved in the study are effectively color blind. Examination of the retinas of the 17 species indicated that only one type of cone was present, which would allow the sharks to only be able to discern shades of light and dark. In comparison, humans have three types of cones which correspond to the ability to distinguish red, green, and blue.

Based on the research, The Telegraph article states that wearing light colored swimwear would reduce contrast with the water, implying that the reduced contrast might result in a decreased chance that a shark would attack. The article also claims that the study “backs up” shark attack statistics which indicate that a “vast majority of attacks happen to divers and surfers wearing black wetsuits.” Unfortunately, the article fails to mention that a vast majority of wetsuits are black, so the probability of a surfer or diver wearing a wetsuit that is black is going to be pretty high regardless of whether they are attacked by a shark or not.

The article goes on to discuss how this finding may be applied to surfing, swimming, and diving apparel. Nathan Hart, the lead author of the study, contends that “brightness contrast is more important for detecting and identifying objects” for the color blind sharks. Additionally, Hart is hopeful this research might be applied to the design of longline fishing hooks to make them less likely to attract sharks and reduce the mortality rates of sharks as a result of longlines.