November 8, 2007
Siding With The Shark: Fuming On A Fish's Behalf
As a long time resident of the Monterey Bay and a marine enthusiast, I got really excited when I saw that the TODAY Show was doing a piece on an incident with a great white shark in Monterey Bay. It's always interesting when our area makes the news, but I was hoping for a fresh perspective.
Not necessarily that they'd ask difficult questions like: Surfer, what were you thinking swimming where half the great white shark attacks in the world occur? Didn't you read the signs? Anyone who lives around the bay already knows the answers to these questions. We all know how far some will go for the perfect wave. I'm cool with Monterey Bay surfers doing what they do - just don't blame the sharks for taking a nibble when these wave-catchers in their neoprene seal costumes hit the beaches.
White shark occurrences happen pretty often here. The Red Triangle (north of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands to south of Monterey) has the highest concentration of the great white shark in the world – and it happens to be endangered and an apex predator.
They're here for the good eating: the Northern Elephant Seal rookeries like Año Nuevo, various seal and sea lion colonies, not to mention fish and whales. In point of fact, nearly all Monterey's beaches have signs that warn against swimming.
The TODAY Show story, which could have been an exciting tale of survival as well as informative about the area it happened, fell way short. The surfer, Todd Endris, was cool. He told his story, about how he was surfing, got attacked by a white shark (called a monster in the write-up but frankly, 12-15 feet long is average in these waters), fought his way free, and was rescued by a pod of dolphins and his surfer buddy. It was the TODAY Show interviewer,Natalie Morales, who pushed for gruesome details.
While the gorey details were revealed, what did the TODAY Show do? They showed stock footage of the Monterey Bay Aquarium great white shark on exhibit. That is a juvenile great white in the Outer Bay Exhibit and Monterey Bay Aquarium proudly boasts the ONLY great white sharks successfully held in captivity. They did not identify the footage as being from this amazing and unique exhibit, only as a backdrop to the gruesome details of the incident.
It would have been so easy to turn this news item into something a bit more informative and a bit less sensational without detracting from the amazing story of survival being told. But the TODAY show chose not to.
Shame on them. Shark PR is already bad enough. They need more support, not less. Even the late Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, regretted how his work influenced people's view on sharks.
If there's one thing that his research in Australia and off the coast of South Africa taught him, it's that he could not write "Jaws" today.
"I could not posit the situation now that I posited then - sort of a rogue shark that came around and wouldn't go away because it had found a steady diet of human beings," Benchley said in an inter-view over a seafood lunch (crab, not shark).
Scientists have learned that much of the shark behavior they used to ascribe to aggression is simply curiosity.
"I attributed to them a kind of marauding monsterism that became what 'Jaws' was," he said. "Now we know that sharks do not attack boats. The way they decide what to eat is by biting it."
More At: Peter Benchley: Jaws Today
Posted by sorsha at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 10, 2007
He Sleeps With The Fishes: Another Juvenile Great White Shark On Exhibit In Monterey
I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.
- Peter Benchley
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has successfully put a young great white shark on exhibit for the third time in history. Earlier in the fall, the young male shark was put into the 1.2 million gallon Outer Bay exhibit, where the public can watch him at their leisure. And he can watch them.
I enjoy going to watch the behavior of the white sharks the aquarium has displayed almost as much as I like watching the people who are there to see the shark. Most of the time, parents seem to be telling their kids that one of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is the great white shark. Or one of the scalloped hammerheads. Another favorite is thinking the dolphinfish (mahi-mahi) is the great white.
Luckily, most kids can tell a great white from a mile away, just like they can ID a brontosaurus. Still, this is the only chance most people will ever have at encountering a live great white shark.
The other fish species in the tank clearly know what the apex predator is. They give him a very wide berth. Executing sharp turns to avoid him within the giant tank. Anyone who has seen the tank behavior enough without the shark can tell there's a certain layer of tension amongst the other fish and turtles when they have a white on exhibit.
He arrived on August 28, and will remain in the million-gallon exhibit as long as he's in good health and hasn't grown too large for us to return safely to the wild.
Like our first shark in 2004, he was caught accidentally in commercial fishing gear. Like our second shark in 2006, he's a young male: just 4-feet, 9-inches long and weighing 67 ½ pounds. As with both of the other young white sharks, he was kept in an ocean holding pen off Malibu in Southern California until we observed him feeding and navigating well in the confines of the pen.
Our first shark was with us for 6 ½ months; our second, for 4 ½ months. Both were successfully returned to the wild, and the tracking tags they carried documented their journeys back in the ocean. We've tagged 10 other young sharks in the wild in Southern California waters as part of our white shark field project, and support research to track the migrations of adult white sharks tagged off the Farallon Islands and Point Año Nuevo on California's central coast.
More At: Monterey Bay Aquarium White Shark Exhibit
The aquarium has been able to do a lot of behavioral research on young whites, of which very little is known, and has successfully returned the previous juvenile great whites to the wild and tracked them.
Posted by sorsha at 9:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2007
Wild About Otters!
Situated halfway between Santa Cruz and Monterey, Moss Landing Beach is a great place to watch wild sea otters. Frequently, a raft of more than fifty otters floats in the harbor, just out of reach. The otters even come up on the beach from time to time, something they only do when they don't expect any predators to bother them.
This month, as part of Monterey Bay Aquarium's Natural History series, a new book on otters has been released in conjunction with the amazing new otter exhibit that opened earlier this spring. The book is titled Wild About Otters, by Marianne Riedman, with a forward by Jean-Michel Cousteau. Not only is this a fantastic book on an amazing animal, but the book also includes some of my own otter photography and I am really honored to be a part of this project.
Discover the Real World of Otters
This summer, plunge deeper into the wild world of otters with our new natural history book Wild About Otters. Filled with beautiful photos and fascinating stories, the book is your guide to the otter world—from southern sea otters off the California coast to their cousins in lakes, rivers and seas around the world. The book is available through the Aquarium Gift & Bookstore.
More At: Monterey Bay Aquarium
Now that the book is out, I can tell you all - you have to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, check out the wonderful new otter exhibit, and while you're there, check out this great new book!
Posted by sorsha at 1:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 14, 2007
Is A Fed Sea Lion A Dead Sea Lion?
America's National Parks including Yosemite NP and Yellowstone NP have used the slogan "A Fed Bear Is A Dead Bear" in order to keep visitors from feeding the bears and conditioning them to humans. Once a bear gets a taste for human foods, it will often become a problem bear, which eventually results in its demise.
Lately, more and more stores of marine mammals interacting with humans having been reaching my ears. These cases have strong similarities to past stories of bears in parks. Perhaps you've heard of the sea lions jumping into people's boats and swamping them, but feeding the sea lions at the wharf is not something visitors automatically think is a bad idea.
A close relative to the bear evolutionarily, sea lions are just as smart as bears, likely moreso. And just like bears, they can become conditioned to humans and become problem animals. Even when great care is taken to try to keep an animal wild, any contact can change the balance.
Rehabilitated animals seem to live a tenuous existence. If they were captured young, they seem more likely to take to their human caretakers, and resist reintroduction into the wild. Such is the case of Astro, the Stellar Sea Lion.
Abandoned as a pup out in Año Nuevo State Reserve last year, Astro was taken in by researchers. He was eventually released, but despite several attempts to establish him in the wild he continues to come back to people. Recently, he was taken out to the sea lion colonies on the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles out of San Francisco Bay.
This past Friday, he returned again.
The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School, next to the shores of San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.
“He did a whole lap,” said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.
More At: MSNBC: Sea lion joins Calif. schoolkids’ walk-a-thon
Since Astro refuses to stay wild, he will likely end up in an aquarium, just as problem bears sometimes end up in zoos. As more and more people flock to beaches as recreation areas, will we see more and more of this?
Posted by sorsha at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 11, 2007
California Sea Otters: Haul Out On Land
The best, not to mention the most dangerous, aspect of nature photography, is that wildlife will always surprise you.
I've found that animals in the wild rarely display your "typical" behavior. National Geographic knows this very well, just look at the recent April 2007 article called Lessons Of The Hunt, where a young leopard kills her first baboon only to adopt its infant temporarily. Certainly not what you'd expect would happen, especially to a young leopard afraid of baboons.
My current special project, the California Sea Otters, is an excellent example of how wildlife doesn't always act as you'd expect. Everytime I go down to visit the otters, I see something I'd never read about before.
Bigger Rafts
The first time I visited Moss Landing, there was a raft of about 50-60 otters hanging out together. I had read that you might see packs of up to 10 together and that they segregated themselves by gender. I will occassionally see a small group of otters, often the younger ones, break off from the main group and play in another part of the slough, but for the most part, the main group stays together.
Shy or Not?
Most of the otters are pretty skittish, unless they're busy eating. When boats approach too close, they all dive and move to another part of the slough. Still, some otters are less shy than others.
Take this past Monday, for example. I had staked out this great spot to photograph the Moss Landing wildlife. It was low tide and I positioned myself at the end of the jetty, down at the waterline. Here, the seals, otters and shorebirds cruised in from the ocean and were almost on top of me before they noticed me. This made for some great seal and bird shots and the main group of otters drifted closer and closer. I was watching a Western Grebe, with its beady red eyes, fish under the water at my feet and so I didn't notice the little otter come zooming around the jetty within 10 feet of me. This otter, whom I've dubbed Baby because it had one pink and one blue tag on its flippers, swam right up to me and made to jump up on the rock next to me. I was so surprised, I took a quick step backward, away from the otter, and so Baby decided to stay in the water and look at me instead. Movement or talking on my part did not phase Baby, who floated so close the long lens of my camera could barely focus. After about 10 minutes, the otter rejoined the main group about 20 meters away.
How Close Is Too Close?
Getting close to wildlife is always a bit art and a bit luck. Stealth helps, too. You're stalking these wild creatures, and putting yourself in amongst them, hopefully without upseting them or causing yourself harm. I generally use the following rules: start with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and stay back 25-30 feet, but stay back even further if the animal seems wary or bothered by your presence.
Sometimes, you have to use a bit of stealth and underhandedness. I was able to sneak up amongst a large group of notoriously shy harbor seals the other day by using the fact that some idiots were scaring them from another direction and they weren't watching me. I couldn't stop the guys from bothering the seals, so I used the distraction to my advantage, placing myself between two groups. I also have found that as long as you do not directly approach a seal, but instead zigzag back and forth closer, they do not panic and enter the water. Once in position, I get down close to the ground and look small and non-threatening. This way, the seals can relax and I can relax and take their pictures.
I know I'm doing it right when the seals resume their original activities and the shorebirds start approaching and fishing within a few feet of me. When its time to go, I slowly rise and back away, never approaching any of the animals. I walk backwards to keep an eye on the animals, and pause if they seem troubled.
When Too Close Happens
This brings me to what happened two days ago. I'm still riding on a high of my immense good luck at the experience, but at first it was a bit unsettling because I got trapped using my own rules, which leads me to another good piece of advice: Always have a secondary escape route.
I had positioned myself at the base of a seacliff, in the afternoon shade with the sun setting behind me. The otters were right in front of me, frollicking in the sun. They were well lit, but I wasn't, and there was a pretty strong wind. In retrospect, my position hunkered down on the beach was really too good - they couldn't smell me and the sun blinded them from seeing me well. Some of them did know I was there, they would come up to within about 10 feet of shore, look at me, and swim away.
A couple of otters had been teasing me like this for about two hours, and I was getting some great shots, intently focused on the otters right in front of me. I do try to be aware of my surroundings, but the beach was only 20 feet wide and my back was to the cliff, so I didn't check my left, right or behind very often. So because of this, I had missed a rather large otter standing in about an inch of water up the beach from me, and in the other direction, another one was looking like it was doing the same.
Now comes the weird part. First one otter, then another, and another, come crawling out of the water around me. They blocked off my way off the beach without walking by them. The first large otter hauled out and curled up smack in the middle of the 20 foot beach, forcing me to skirt around it with very little room to spare. This otter, Sleepy (my husband named her), went straight to sleep on the beach, and wasn't the slightest bit upset by my setting up the camera about 30 feet away from her.
As I sat there watching her, another otter hauled out, came up to her and poked her with its nose. She opened her eyes, rolled over, and went back to sleep. The other otter went back into the water to play. Some young boys came along while I went to the car and tried to poke it and pet it and feed it crab legs, but I explained they shouldn't bug it like that (they were tourists and barey spoke English and didn't know it was an otter).
I went back and took more pictures of Sleepy and told my husband to come down to the beach and see this, because we hadn't known that sea otters ever came on land. Its not that they're not capable, but they are really quite graceless on land. They walk along on their front flippers and drag their wet back end out of the surf. When he arrived, it was almost sunset. We watched more and more otters haul out. We counted 12 otters on our short stretch of beach. Seven of which had hauled out together and were running around on the beach, doing that hop-like ferret walk. At least thirty more otters still floated in the shallows nearby. We got some video footage and I'll post it on the podcast feed later this month.
I cannot find much of anything online about sea otters hauling out on land. It's a very rare event, and to see so many is really amazing. I've contacted the Monterey Bay Aquarium to ask about this behavior. I read that mothers often beach their babies while they hunt, but there were no babies here. These were resting otters and some younger ones playing and running around.
I would never have anticipated that the otters would have come up on the beach. If I had, I would have been paying more attention to my flanks while I was shooting. Luckily, Sleepy was just that, and she wasn't bothered when I had to sneak by her, she just kept on snoozing.
Posted by sorsha at 9:24 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
Nefarious Porpoises: Military Marine Mammals
I think it was the summer before eighth grade when I decided to read all the books on the summer reading list. I plowed through the usual suspects like the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, To Kill a Mockingbird, Call of the Wild and White Fang (or as I like to call it, Call of the Wild in reverse), All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Catcher in the Rye. I've still got my meaningfully marked up versions of Brave New World and 1984.
Somehow I stumbled across a lesser known novel with a similar theme to the Manchurian Candidate. The book, by Robert Merle, was called Day of the Dolphin and it was about a scientist who had trained two dolphins to understand English. They had then been stolen and used for nefarious purposes to try to assassinate the President. The book was later made into a movie, starring George C. Scott. It had a good soundtrack.
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Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) |
It sounds like something out of the X-Files but it has some basis in fact. While we may not have bridged the communication gap with dolphins completely, both the Americans and the Russians have had programs to train dolphins and other marine mammals like sea lions for military purposes in the Cold War era.
Since the late 1950s, the U.S. and other nations have experimented with using dolphins and other marine mammals, such as sea lions, for military purposes. Part of the interest stems from figuring out how these animals can swim so fast and dive so deep and perhaps borrow their secrets to build better submarines and ships. But military planners have also been interested in using the animals to undertake risky or difficult missions, such as underwater mine detection, retrieving objects from the ocean floor, or sea guard duty.
Dolphins have proved adept at such tasks. They are smart and relatively easy to train, and in its heyday, the Navy's dolphin program boasted more than 100 animals. They weren't used widely, but many did see service in the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War. More recently, several Navy dolphins helped find, mark, and clear mines from a key port during the war in Iraq.
In such operations, the animals use their sensitive sonar to spot the mines, then signal handlers in a nearby boat that they've found something by placing one of two special disks in the boat. "They don't miss anything," a Navy spokesman told reporters. "If a mine is there, they will find it. Nothing gets by them."
More At: Nature: Dolphins At War
While the Russian program supposedly closed about 15 years ago, the San Diego-based U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program is still in operation today and dolphins are actively used.
The US facility in San Diego has had a captive breeding program since the late 1980's, so they do not take dolphins from the wild or other zoos. The five marine mammal teams are made up of dolphins and sea lions. Each group is trained to do something very specific, like finding mines or finding areas without mines for troops to land on shore safely. The teams can be deployed with very little notice (like 3 days).
The Russians sold their dolphins to Iran back in 2000, when their trainer could no longer afford to care for them properly. Most of the dolphins had supposedly been trained to attack enemy divers, run kamikaze missions to place mines on ships, etc.
In total, 27 animals, including walruses, sea lions, seals, and a white beluga whale, were loaded with the dolphins into a Russian transport aircraft for the journey from Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, in the Black Sea, to the Persian Gulf.
Three cormorants were also among the cargo.
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Mr Zhurid remained vague on the role he and the animals would play, but he said: "I am prepared to go to Allah, or even to the devil, as long as my animals will be OK there."
More At: BBC News: Iran buys kamikaze dolphins
 | The United States has denied any offensive training methods, just rescue and reconnaissance. However, one can see that it is certainly feasible that these dolphins could be taught such things. |
Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) |
Some sources say US dolphins were fitted with toxic dart guns, whereas the Russian dolphins just had these big spears to poke divers with (no hands to fire weapons). There was also more recent story of a bunch of US military dolphins possibly getting loose during Hurricane Katrina but it has remained unsubstantiated. There was an oceanarium in New Orleans that was flooded and its dolphins escaped and some were later saved. I think most of the hubbub arose when the military insisted on examining the rescued dolphins, which led to speculation that they were looking for dolphins. At the time, the newspapers called these animals "Firing Flippers".
Now keep in mind, animals in warfare are not a new concept. Humans have used them from the almost the very beginning. Cavalry horses and elephants. War pigs to scare the elephants into trampling their own soldiers. Beasts of burden like mules and oxen to carry military supplies and equipment. Camels in the desert. Hawks and messenger pigeons carrying other gifts like missile homing beacons. Russian war dogs used as anti-tank measures. The list goes on and on. And it gets weirder and weirder. For example, why use burning arrows when you can set monkeys on fire?
...monkeys were used, in the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, in a battle between rebels of the Yanzhou province, and chinese imperial army led by Zhao Yu. The monkeys were used as live Incendiary device. The animals were clothed with straw, dipped in oil and set fire to. They were set loose into the enemy's camp, thus setting the tents on fire, and driving the whole camp into chaos.
More At: Wikipedia: Military Animals
Well, at least dolphins don't have to worry about being set on fire, just blown up, either purposefully or accidentally. I suppose for many people, they'd rather it was a dolphin than a military diver. I certainly understand that, but I also feel quite uncomfortable with that and I'm trying to pinpoint exactly why. Partly, the diver has free will and the dolphin doesn't, but also, the diver has some idea what the ramifications of his/her actions are, whereas the dolphin knows it will "get treat". I cannot really say I don't think the program to help clear mines and rescue people isn't a good one, but putting animals on the front line offensive is another matter entirely.
Unfortunately, since marine mammals are sometimes used for spying and reconnaissance, they are more likely to be under suspicion when they appear, whether they are on a mission, or just your average civilian critter, minding its own business. Some worry that nations will develop a practice like shooting dolphins, whether they are military or native, just to avoid the dangers of being spied on.
Lastly, porpoises are closely related to dolphins, but are in a different family (Phocoenidae). This hasn't stopped sailors from calling dolphins porpoises over the years, though. You can tell the difference because dolphins have cone-shaped teeth and porpoises have flatter teeth.
You can read more about dolphins on this blog:
Sonar Strandings & Dolphin Deaths
Saving Poster-Friendly Species: Perhaps More Strategic Than We Think
From Vampiric Spiders To Owl Engineering
Posted by sorsha at 6:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 10, 2007
Año Nuevo: Stalked By A Harbor Seal
When the tide is out a bit, I love to walk along Cove Beach in Año Nuevo Reserve. It's a nice long stretch of probably about half a mile and I'm often the only person on it, especially early in the morning. It's become a loser beach for young male elephant seals who don't establish their dominance and set up harems, as well as young seals just learning to swim.
On more than one occasion, I've been wandering down the beach, looking up at the rocky cliffs or examining something in the sand, and not noticed a large male elephant seal hauling out of the water behind me. It's no big deal, I'm just between him and the nice spot he's picked out to lay in. I just get out of the way. Still, I've learned to keep one eye on the water as I'm walking along, just to avoid that little "EEP!" moment.
Elephant Seals aren't the only marine life around by any means. One morning I was walking along Cove Beach and I glanced out into the ocean, and I saw a little seal. I know the picture above is a bit dark, and a wet seal looks like, well, a wet seal, but this particular one had very splotched coloring and it didn't look like an elephant seal weaner.
Año Nuevo Island and the adjacent mainland beaches make up one of the most important pinniped rookery and resting areas in central and northern California... Harbor seals are much smaller and quite wary and elusive.
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Harbor seals live on the island all year and breed there in April and May. They can often be seen bobbing in the surf just off the reserve's beaches, with only their heads out of the water. They can also be seen occasionally on offshore rocks where the mottled pattern of their coats is apparent.
More At: Año Nuevo SR: Marine Life
It was a harbor seal, a relatively young one and I was to find it was a very curious one. I looked at her (inquisitive seals are always female). Ok, so that's probably not really true, but I could not examine the seal's unmentionables and it sounded good and I hate calling the seal an "it".
So, anyway, back to my story. I looked at her and she looked right back at me. She was probably about 35 feet away. After a few long moments of eye contact, I turned and continued to walk down the beach. About a handful of steps later, I looked out to sea again. She was still there, right even with me. I was surprised. I walked further and she stayed parallel with me the whole way, never coming closer or putting any distance between us. She tracked me all the way down the beach, for at least a quarter of a mile.
The episode has stuck with me. Really, think how many times you have been followed by an animal. Specifically one that has not been domesticated or one that expects food from you. It doesn't happen very often.
Posted by sorsha at 8:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 26, 2007
San Francisco Shark Smuggling Scandal
Shark finning is a cruel and wasteful practice of catching wild sharks, chopping off their fins (for soup or traditional medicine) and throwing the rest of the shark back in the ocean.
When I hear about finning, I first (and somewhat erroneously) think of foreign fishing vessels. Ones closer to the shark-fin market, primarily Asian. That's not to say I don't think that the Americas aren't doing their own nasty part when it comes to hurting marine wildlife, sharks included. The US plays a significant part in the worldwide overfishing and by-catch dilemmas,and we also import shark fins and shark liver oil. I just assume that we have more regulation of finning.
So hearing about this particularly evil shark smuggling ring operating in my own local area has made me beyond disgusted and not just because the ring-leader says God made him do it. We live in one of the most prized marine ecological areas in the world and yet still people do stupid, terrible things like this, just to make a buck.
Leopard sharks in the San Francisco Bay Area will benefit from fines totaling nearly a million U.S. dollars—money resulting from the bust of a massive shark-smuggling ring that had been operating out of a local church.
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Over the span of more than a decade, the smugglers had pulled thousands of baby leopard sharks from the waters near San Francisco, California. The animals were sold alive to pet stores and private buyers throughout the United States and abroad.
"It's the largest investigation of shark poaching in U.S. history," said Roy Torres, a special agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service's Office of Law Enforcement in Pacific Grove, California.
Last Monday Kevin Thompson—the 48-year-old pastor of the Bay Area Family Church in San Leandro and the poaching ringleader—was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of U.S. $100,000.
Five other people were convicted in the two-year investigation and were ordered to pay a combined total of $310,000.
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Following the bust, 19 baby leopard sharks originating from the San Francisco Bay had been delivered to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where the settlement was announced.
Four of the sharks were on display that day. Nine had been returned to the ocean, and the rest had died.
Lisa Nichols, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in San Diego, California, said that "we estimate anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 sharks have been collected over the last decade."
More At: National Geographic: Shark-Smuggling Bust Nets $1 Million for Habitat Protection
It takes almost a decade for a female leopard shark to reach sexual maturity, which is very slow for a fish species. Yet the smugglers were harvesting pregnant female leopard sharks and cutting their babies out of them. The adult females were too big to ship and sell, so they were discarded while the young ones were sold to pet shops. By targeting females and the young, the smugglers may have had a serious impact on the reproductive capacity of future generations of this harmless shark living in the Bay Area.
Leopard sharks live only the west coast of North America and are already at risk and are protected by numerous laws. The endangered wildlife black market is second only to the illegal drug market in the US.
Posted by sorsha at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2007
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Barracuda?
In Kenya, we had a rather large crocodile take up residence outside our tent. When we asked a local how to avoid a confrontation, he said:
Don't act like an impala.
In Hawaii this past week, a tourist asked how to avoid a shark attack and received the following response:
Don't look like a seal.
This is actually very good advice. Most animal attacks, even by apex predators, are either due to either harassment or misinterpretation. Nowadays most people know that from below, surfers look a lot like seals. A person kneeling at a water hole could be mistaken for a small animal drinking. The glint of a dive knife can look a lot like fish scales.
There's a reason people say "Look big" and then back down when you come in contact with a predator. If we aren't paying attention, we might accidently act like prey, cowering or running without thinking. In almost all cases though, its best to stand your ground and then remove yourself from the situation. Having something in front of you to act as a shield helps too, whether its a backpack or a dive light.
Nowadays I live on the West Coast, where my main concern when diving is that a California Sea Otter will chew through my air hose, but when I was young and lived on the East Coast, many of my friends would go to Florida for vacations. They didn't worry about the sharks (a few thousand fatalities in the past century) or jellies (the box jellyfish kills more people than sharks, crocodiles and stonefish combined), or Portuguese Man-of-War. They worried about the barracudas.
Barracudas are an interesting group of fish with a chilling reputation that is quite undeserved. They've gotten a bad wrap for what is mostly just a face only a mother could love (incidentally, she doesn't even see her young cause they are fertilized in open water and grow up alone in estuaries). Apparently, only two fatalities can be attributed to barracuda in the past century.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year (choking only, other ballpoint pen related deaths have been omitted from this statistic). The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued in 1888, but let's say they weren't mass produced until the 1940's after some significant improvements. Number crunch sound here. Ok, so by my math, that means you are 3500x more likely to choke on a ballpoint pen than you are to be killed by a barracuda.
Barracudas are scavengers and they are not particularly stupid. They may appear to be stalking you, but likely they think you're a bigger predator likely to find them some food. They're hanging out to snag your leftovers. Wait, that didn't sound right...
Perhaps I should have called this post Mimicking A Meal Will Get You Munched... the point is that just about all animals, even apex predators, do not enjoy eating manflesh. The only creatures I know that do are the fictional orcs in Lord of the Rings. The rest of the critters of the world will spit you out.
Posted by sorsha at 4:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 31, 2006
Misdirected Manatee Meets Memphis
It's interesting what newsworthy events you remember from your childhood. I was in third grade in 1986 and two memories stick out in my mind - one that rocked the nation and the other was barely a blip on the radar.
In January of 1986, our whole classroom gathered especially to watch the televised Challenger liftoff. The mission was especially exciting to us kids because one of the astronauts, Christa McAuliffe, had been selected to be the first school teacher ever to go into space. When the shuttle broke up, the TV was quickly shut off and we were hustled out to recess instead.
Still, when I hear about manned space missions nowadays, I don't automatically think of the Challenger. I don't think that's a testiment of how minimal its impact was on me, but how far the space program has come since then. Still, when I hear about marine mammals venturing too close to people, I am reminded of the other news story I remember from that year. One that barely made the paper.
For 14 months, a young female beluga whale disported herself along the coast of Connecticut, making friends with fascinated humans. ''It would follow boats, it would swim with swimmers, it would allow itself to be patted by people from boats,'' recalled Laura Kezer of the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium.
Last week, the whale, nicknamed B. W., was shot to death by someone who had a .22-caliber gun and none of the sense of mystery and wonder that B. W. had awakened in so many people. Her body, found floating belly-up in New Haven Harbor, was towed to the Mystic aquarium, where scientists performed an autopsy.
Most people would argue that the loss of human life in the Challenger accident should have resounded more powerfully than the death of one beluga whale, but in my mind, they stand equal. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I was willing to accept that the Challenger disaster had a logical explanation - it was an accident - while nothing could make me understand how a young female beluga whale could have ended up shot to death.
According to Wikipedia, there are about 100,000 beluga whales alive today, whereas all three species of manatee are vulnerable to extinction with only about 3000 left in the Florida region, with populations decreasing steadily.
MEMPHIS - A misdirected manatee that swam 700 miles up the Mississippi River will be taken back to warmer waters by truck, a wildlife biologist said Wednesday.
The docile marine mammal, about 8 feet long, has been hanging around for several days near the downtown Memphis riverfront in the chilly waters of the Wolf River Harbor.
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Authorities said they had no idea what led the manatee to enter the Mississippi and head north.
Manatees are an endangered species found mostly from the coasts of Alabama to South Carolina, although they sometimes stray farther north in the summer. In August, a manatee was tracked as it swam up the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey before finally appearing in the Hudson River at Manhattan.
But this time of year, manatees normally would be moving into Florida rivers, not the Mississippi, said Pat Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club in Maitland, Fla.
When manatees get too cold they stop eating and their digestive systems shut down.
More at: Manatee detours up Mississippi to Memphis
Photo Credit: USGS
Posted by sorsha at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2006
Moss Landing State Beach: Southern Sea Otters
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A Raft Of Otters |
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Playing In The Water |
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Keep Your Distance |
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Hanging In Kelp Beds |
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Just Floating Around |
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Floating Around |
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Grooming |
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Thick Coats |
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Mother & Young Otter |
Posted by sorsha at 8:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Moss Landing State Beach: Otter Research & Tagging
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Tagged! |
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Tags Are Pesky |
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Posted by sorsha at 8:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Moss Landing State Beach: Otters & Their Young
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Mother and Child |
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Mother and Child |
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Mother and Child |
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Mother and Child |
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Posted by sorsha at 8:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Moss Landing State Beach: Otters at Play
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Otters Playing |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Otters Playing, Fighting & Mating |
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Posted by sorsha at 7:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Moss Landing State Beach: Shark Attack
Great white sharks make their home in the Monterey Bay, but I have never see one in the Monterey Bay. Still, I know better than to swim anywhere near seals, nor near dusk. However, these otters didn't seem too bothered. Sorry I didn't get a better picture but at least you can see - the bigger splashing, the fin showing, and the very clear black and white coloring and bullet shape of the face. It looks to be a very young great white, given the size. It was not a successful attack.
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The Splash (Raft of Otters in the Background) |
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Snout, Black and White coloring, Pectoral Fin |
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- PERLGURL.ORG Podcast Episode #1: We're Going To Need A Bigger Boat - Great White Sharks
- Finally! Great Whites Get Protection
- Great White Sharks - More Footage
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- Great White Sharks One of Many Victims In Multi-Billion Dollar Wildlife Black Market
- Fast Fishes: Great White Shark Speed Record
- Isolated Ecosystems: The Farallons Are California’s Galapagos
Posted by sorsha at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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