Shark Bite!

Oh well - watch this.

PS - Hahahahahahaha - embedding has been disabled - but of course it has not been deleted as Freek wants to continue showcasing his heroic feat: you can watch it right here!
PPS - and now it has been retracted...
PPPS - and in case you missed it: here it is on another page!

Oh and here is the video - til it gets retracted again.... hahahahahahaha... seriously, how fucking pathetic is that!



Well what can I say.

That baited reefie snorkel where Doc weans his students and select visitors off their selachophobia has always been sketchy as all it took was some wrong movement and/or highly competitive situation and/or a particularly frisky individual to trigger a bite - and q.e.d.!

Not really impressed by the lack of proper first aid materials (QuikClot please!) on the boat, not really impressed by the absence of a medical professional and not really impressed by what appears to be a rather nonchalant evacuation protocol - but this is obviously not a tourist setup but a science lab, and the risk assessment and liability implications may indeed be different. But still - so let the learning curve be steep as shit will continue to happen!

And the dude?

I must say that he did handle it quite well, and that my personal impression that he was a bit of a wanker has improved accordingly - tho was there really any urgent need to show this to the masses at large? So here's to said masses learning that Sharks are never, ever puppy dogs, and that engaging in stupid behavior with wildlife is, well, stupid.

In diesem Sinne - Happy New Year everybody!

PS Shark bite here and here and here - til that gets deleted, too!
And... he really is a wanker for leaving that shit online!

Doc - the Book!

JSD and the book!

Very, very nice indeed!

I've just received the book.

The package comes with a letter about the Shark Lab's ambitious renovation plans, and an e-mail asks me to please share or review it. 

What can I say.

Doc is both a pal and somebody I revere enormously, and author Jeremy has long been a pen pal who often graces this blog with his inimitably witty and sometimes, brutally sarcastic comments.

So there.

Thing is, I do this gladly as I really do love the book.

Truth be told I've just started reading it - but I can already say that it is riveting and entertaining, and written with much love but also knowledge, much along the lines of this shorter interim eulogy, equally by Jeremy. My own synopsis: Seriously, you just can't make that shit up - epic stuff!

Absolutely and unequivocally, required reading!

Plus, there is the cause.

Doc's, and now Tristan's iconic Sharklab has been the epicenter of excellent Shark research for the past 25 years and is now in dire need of a major rejuvenation and upgrade, and the book is one of the vehicles intended for collecting the required funds.

Website here, purchase options here.

Enjoy!

 

Bimini - Something nice!

Source.

Watch this.

This is great stuff.

Particularly big kudos to Winram who has donated his time and his money. The current world champion, he's the better waterman and shines through his modesty and feats rather than the usual pathetic self promotion - and yes I will certainly leave it at that!

Well done!

And here's another real nice one by Jillian and Duncan.
I love dubstep!
Enjoy!

Lemon Shark Philopatry - Comments by Doc!

PIT tagging of juvenile Lemons, Bimini - source.

Wow.

I just found this in my inbox.

This is what it takes to produce real and like I said, simply epic research - not this amateur shit, and I cite,

We conducted the tests of potential approach preference of sharks with regard to human body orientation in the Northern Abaco Islands, Bahamas, on 8 days between July 7 and 24, 2009. Later on, several days were excluded due to the chosen criteria.

But I'm digressing as usual.

Without further ado, here are the remarks = two cents :) by Doc - needless to say that I am honored!

Reply to Da Shark’s blog on the recent publication of our lemon shark genetic research in the journal Molecular Ecology as reported in the New York Times: 

Like the EverReady bunny, we are still going….and in June 2014 it will be year 19. 

There is still a lot more to be learned from our continuing and longitudinal study of lemon shark genetics but here's the way this all played out according to my foggy recollection. 

In 1990 the Bimini Biological Field Station was established. 

That year we became interested in shark genetics and actually did our first "PIT project" collecting genetic samples and PIT (RFID) tagging the little lemons. We caught 90 lemon sharks that June but alas that was the last I ever heard of the samples which were sent for analysis to a black hole the UK. In addition we caught no lemon sharks in November 1990 so I figured that was that. 

In 1995, I was contacted by a young graduate student, Kevin Feldheim working in Mary Ashley's lab at University of Illinois-Chicago. 

He wanted to study our little lemon sharks but had no funds. I thought we could support Kevin at the station if Mary could deal with his laboratory work. So I went to Chicago and we got into a discussion about NSF funding. I had been relatively successful with NSF in the past but after recovering from cancer in 1989 I hated the idea of writing one of those damned proposal "books" again only to get it turned down. However working together in Chicago the three of us wrote a first-class proposal and MIRACLE! The combination of Mary's expertise and my reputation as some sort of shark maverick did the trick and NSF granted us funds to bring Kev to Bimini for a few years to do the field research. So starting in 1995 and continuing even until today we tagged sharks and collected genetic material; and for three years, funded by our NSF grant we sampled over 700 young lemon sharks at Bimini. 

Of course shark genetics did not start with our project but these earlier studies were mainly set up to determine the relationship between species---molecular taxonomy. 

In contrast, we were interested in the genetics of breeding biology which was entirely unknown for sharks as well as most other aquatic vertebrates. 

I think there were three reasons for the fantastic (to me) success of this project: 

First was Kevin Feldheim who carried out hundreds of experiments until he found the key to DNA finger printing lemon sharks....microsatellite alleles with high variability conferred by high repeat numbers (this laid the background for the research of Joey DiBattista and Demian Chapman); second, the amazing lemon shark, an animal that repeatedly lent itself to manipulation as a model species (think white rat!) allowing us to study the biology of large sharks; and three, the islands of Bimini for which the vagaries of sea level rise and fall created a small lagoon that was the perfect breeding ground for lemon sharks. Importantly unlike Florida only 42 NM to the west, our Bimini lemon sharks hung around the islands for up to 8 years and could be captured time and time again. 

Once Kevin laid the groundwork to open up questions that were previously unanswerable, we undertook a concerted effort to mine this treasure of marine biology. 

Enter Dr. Ellen Pikitch and the Pew Foundation: Already the lead author Dr. Damian Chapman had been to the Sharklab years ago and so had Ellen but now things got serious. I was nearing retirement and thinking about the future funding of the Sharklab. Ellen got the idea to fund the station with a generous 5-year PEW grant and in exchange we would share all the data with her then doctoral student Damien Chapman. This was a dream come true for all of us. Now we had another grant that would see us through the lemon shark's estimated time-to-maturity...shown by my student Craig Brown way back in the 80s to be 12-14 years after birth. 

Simultaneously we began to develop techniques to search out and wrangle the potentially dangerous adult lemon sharks that come into the lagoon for mating and parturition every April and May. 

We were eventually able to predict when they would show up, how to capture them and even learned to do a kind of mid-midwifery to assist in the birth process. This technique provided DNA from both the Mom and all her pups. It then became a matter of continuing the collections until a dozen years went by in hopes that a youngster born in Bimini in 1995 or later survived to adulthood and could be identified in Kevin and Joey's lemon shark pedigree. 

Well....incredibly our gamble our came true. 

After about a dozen years a few survivors began to appear in the lagoon and we thought this was just amazing. Talk about tenacity and collaboration! We predicted based on two decades of prior study that the lemon shark would return---and we toughed out the years and effort to do the labor-intensive but hugely enjoyable task of collecting lemon shark pups for a dozen years and beyond, braving shark bites, tropical thunder storms, dangerous lightening, swarms of mosquitoes, no real sleep for weeks on end and a myriad of other political and biological barriers including serious damage to the nursery from a ridiculously huge resort development on tiny little Bimini. 

Together in collaboration between three research institutions, the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation, University of Illinois-Chicago and Stonybrook University the study that Da Shark so eloquently referred to was accomplished. 

If you actually have time to read this missive you will see that the influence of one group or the other to the success of this remarkable research is total....no progress could have been made without the three institution's cooperation. And even today, 19 years after the project began we are continuing the annual collection of genetic data from not one but three sites in hopes that one day the lemon shark and its vulnerable nursery habitats will receive the protection that they truly need. 

Just my two cents. doc 

Dr. Samuel H. Gruber (Emeritus) 

Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries 

Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences 

University of Miami 

and 

Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation 

9300 SW 99 St 

Miami FL 

http://www.miami.edu/sharklab 

Natal Philopatry in Lemon Sharks - Paper!

Time for some Hi-Fives! Source.

Now THIS is real science!

No wonder as starting with the Grand Mufti himself, the list of authors reads like the who's who of Shark research - and with the data spanning a whopping 17 years, this is nothing short of epic!

All I can say is, I'm deeply impressed!

Looks like Lemon Sharks not only go back and give birth in the same nurseries (= reproductive philatropy) like the Moorea Blacktips, but that those nurseries are the very where they themselves were born (= natal philopatry or natal homing), like e.g. Salmon or Turtles! This has immediate implications for conservation insofar as it mandates special efforts to protect those nurseries.

Nice synopses here, here and here - and here's a video.

And the Bull Sharks?
Mark has already published evidence for reproductive philopatry of Bull Sharks in Australia, and one of the aims of our new research projects with Projects Abroad will be to check whether this is equally the case for our Fiji Bull Sharks.
So keep watching this space!

Anyway, great job!

Enjoy!

Bimini Hammers - more great Stuff!

Click for detail!

Behold!

Once again, this is as good as it gets.

Like suggested, this will provide for great diving, it will support reputable local businesses and the SharkLab - and as an added bonus, you will get to meet some of the nicest folks in the industry, foremost of which the simply unmatched Howard and Michele! 

And, you can win yourselves some prizes!

Highly recommended!
And coming right on the heels of the SharkLab program, it could even be an extension of that experience!
Do it!

Bimini Hammers - the Best of the Best!

Source - click for detail!

Remember?

And the next season?

From what I hear, the barbarians may be in for a surprise - but worry not, you can still go and witness those fantastic Great Hammerheads! Reputable resorts like the Sands and the Club host local operations that will be happy to take you diving with them - but above all, there is the awesome program by the Sharklab, see at the top! And, go and check out the Sardines!

Way to go!

And since we're at it!
I sure hope you know whom to stay away from - and if not, educate yourself here!

Bimini - Barbarians at the Gate?

Check out that pic.

Five people found it fit to send it over in e-mails replete with expletives - and yes this would be the daily fare in the life of an infamous watchdog blogger! :)

Prima vista this is certainly disturbing - but having been accused of jumping to conclusions prematurely, let's maybe hear it from the horses mouth first.

Eli, what happened?

This is obviously one of Bimini's Great Hammerheads.

I was first alerted to their existence by Joe's fantastic portrait and then later, by these stellar pics about the research conducted by Doc's Sharklab. And now that the Hammer is out of the bag, so to say, there are reports that everybody, his dog and the dog of is dog are invading the island in search of those elusive images - foremost of which the infamous twins of Discovery Channel Shark Porn made in the Bahamas, Stuart Cove and Gurney Productions! And of course, I hear, everybody is filming for fun and not commercially, lest they would have to, gasp, apply for the proper permits - I mean, seriously, is Discovery really that cheap?
Actually, forget that question!

But I'm digressing as always.

Don't get me wrong here.

It is great that Bimini is experiencing a growing influx of Shark enthusiasts that may, if properly managed, inject valuable long-term tourism dollars into the local economy.

But at the same time, this is already feeling like the proverbial free-for-all where an excess of exuberance may well end up ruining it for everybody - let alone desecrate the hallowed research sites of what is arguably the world's foremost and certainly most revered Shark research institution!

In brief - don't you go messing with Doc's Sharks!

From an initial missive by Tristan Guttridge, Executive Director of the lab.

For the past 23 years the Bimini Biological Field Station, "Sharklab" has been documenting the occurrence of Great hammerhead, S. mokarran sharks around the Bimini Islands.
In 2003 we located an area, "The Grate" where these animals could be baited in for snorkeling experiences and to facilitate tagging and genetic sampling. Last year this site was used for the first time commercially as a scuba diving experience for tourists and in the past two months a number of live-aboard vessels have begun to explore its potential. Whilst we are delighted to see people from around the globe interact with, and observe up close one of the worlds most charismatic predators we are keen to ensure that such experiences are conducted in a safe and responsible manner.

And there's also this open letter.
I must applaud Grant as this is really as good as it gets - kudos!

Indeed, luckily it's by no means too late.

With a bit more of respect and mutual cooperation, this could be turned into a win-win for everybody: Bimini's tourism industry, the Shark divers, Shark research and most importantly, the Sharks themselves! The solution: some of that good old fashioned self regulation for which the diving industry has always been a shining example!

At the risk of being accused of interfering.

We here at BAD sit very much at the junction of where Shark tourism intersects with Shark research, and are continuously learning and always thinking hard about the best ways of improving and promoting both sometimes conflicting sides of that equation.
Here's what I would suggest for Bimini's Shark viewing tourism - for Hammerheads but eventually also for other sites and species.

First and foremost.

• Somebody needs to assume the leadership role.
  The natural candidate for this would have to be the Sharklab which is by definition neutral and also disposes of by far the most comprehensive knowledge base about the local Sharks and potential Shark viewing sites. But this would imply their willingness to devote part of their resources to something ouside of their strictly academic purview, and they may not want to assume that responsibility.
  If so, is there some local tourism org (maybe Grant's?) that could do the honors?

Then, I believe that everybody should agree on a common set of procedures.

They should address the following.

• Snorkeling/free diving or SCUBA?
  This depends on species and possibly also on how the Sharks are being provisioned. Lots of bait/dangerous species = no snorkeling!.
  In the case of Great Hammers that appear to be specialized hunters of Stingrays and smaller Sharks but also Fishes and that as far as I know have never been implicated in predatory attacks on humans, I believe that both is possible and desirable, also in order to maximize the number of potential tourists.

• Baiting or hand feeding?
  We hand feed as we believe that by doing so, we can control the behavior of the (many) animals by controlling the amount of food we introduce. But we're the only operator on site and our feeders undergo many months of training. Also, Great Hammers tend to be solitary so control is not a primary concern and judging from this picture gallery, baiting via rigged baits is an effective and proven technique.
  But you can't have both!
  E.g., the Sharks in Tiger Beach experience both hand feeding and baiting. The result is that TB has become notorious for its beggar Sharks, i.e. Sharks that when there is no feeder acting as a focal point, approach and bump and even maul (!) unsuspecting clients - which to say it mildly is slightly disconcerting!
  We strongly believe that for the sake of the tourist but above all, the animals, protocols should be kept uniform in order to establish a predictable and thus safe routine.
  With that in mind and because not everybody is as good as Eli who really knows what he is doing, and because many oppose hand feeding for perceived ethical reasons: hand feeding is likely to be a no-go.
  And may I strongly advise against indiscriminate dumping, especially from the surface as this precludes any control over the animals' behavior!

• No more than one operator on site at any time - meaning that operators should announce themselves and that outings need to be coordinated (like e.g. in Cocos and the Galapagos)
  Compare once again with TB where multiple simultaneous operators have resorted to out-baiting each other in order to draw the Tigers to "their" side! There's also a risk of overcrowding and according lack of control by the operators. And most importantly - there needs to be coordination with the Sharklab not to interfere with their research!

• No touching, riding or otherwise molesting!
  This I hear has already happened and risks alienating the notoriously shy Sharks. It is I believe also profoundly disrespectful - can't one just fucking watch, capture images and admire?

Further suggestions

• Those bigger liveaboard vessels should install fixed moorings not to unnecessarily disrupt the habitats!

• Visiting vessels should make it a point to contribute to the local economy, e.g. by docking, buying souvenirs, having a meal at a local eatery, taking local tours, even refueling, much along the lines of Grant's letter.
  Ideally tho, clients should be encouraged to fly in and go out with a local operator - whilst staying at e.g. the Bimini Sands and Bimini Big Game that are Shark Free Marinas and that do not contribute to the destruction of Mangroves (and thus, of the Lemon Shark nurseries) like their principal competitor!

• Sharklab researchers should be invited to join in in order to add to their data and maybe even make presentations which would be a big plus for the tourists.

• The Sharklab could develop a simple citizen science questionnaire.
  It could comprise data about numbers, sex, size, presence of tags, simple behavior etc., and operators should encourage their clients to participate. This is valuable science and also great tourism as customers love taking part in research!

• The Sharklab could offer guided tours of the lab.
  Once again, shark divers love that kind of stuff and will undoubtedly be happy to pay a fee or make a donation!

So much for the Hammerheads and Reef dives

And the Bimini Bull Run?

As far as I understand it, it's a caged Bull Shark dive for punters off a dock at the Big Game. If you recall, that's the marina where that jackass hooked one of the resident Bulls, camera running - but those shenanigans are now being contained.

It is totally safe and utterly harmless, and good on them for having set it up.

But - and yes there had to be a but... :)

With experience telling us that it won't be long before some moronic punter will try and do this cageless (to change perceptions and for the Sharks!), may I suggest to prophylactically already develop adequate protocols for dealing with that inevitable eventuality!

Anyway.

As always, just a couple of personal suggestions..

But in the end, these are not my Sharks and this is certainly not my territory - and there are undoubtedly good local people already  looking into this and hopefully, taking charge!

Wishing everybody all the very best of success!

Learning in Sharks - new Paper!

 Beautiful pic of juvenile Lemon Shark. Source: Battling for Bimini. Click for detail!

Cool stuff!

From the paper.

Abstract

Social learning is taxonomically widespread and can provide distinct behavioural advantages, such as in finding food or avoiding predators more efficiently.

Although extensively studied in bony fishes, no such empirical evidence exists for cartilaginous fishes.

Our aim in this study was to experimentally investigate the social learning capabilities of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris. We designed a novel food task, where sharks were required to enter a start zone and subsequently make physical contact with a target in order to receive a food reward.

Fig. 1 Set-up of social learning experiment: a positions and measurements of zones, target and reward; b schematic of the target mechanism showing covered and exposed position as well as side and front views; and c steps of the food task or trial - click for detail!

Naive sharks were then able to interact with and observe (a) pre-trained sharks, that is, 'demonstrators', or (b) sharks with no previous experience, that is, 'sham demonstrators'.

On completion, observer sharks were then isolated and tested individually in a similar task.

During the exposure phase observers paired with 'demonstrator' sharks performed a greater number of task-related behaviours and made significantly more transitions from the start zone to the target, than observers paired with 'sham demonstrators'. When tested in isolation, observers previously paired with 'demonstrator' sharks completed a greater number of trials and made contact with the target significantly more often than observers previously paired with 'sham demonstrators'.

Such experience also tended to result in faster overall task performance.

Fig. 5 Testing phase: median (±interquartile range) number of physical contacts made with the target and the target cover by individual observer sharks previously paired with demonstrators (D) or sham demonstrators (SD). P\0.05 in both cases, Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, n = 5 - click for detail!

These results indicate that juvenile lemon sharks, like numerous other animals, are capable of using socially derived information to learn about novel features in their environment.

The results likely have important implications for behavioural processes, ecotourism and fisheries.

From the Discussion

It has previously been hypothesised that sharks can form groups for increased foraging opportunities (Jacoby et al. 2011) and that sharks exhibiting feeding behaviour attract nearby conspecifics or heterospecifics (Myrberg et al. 1969; Bres 1993; Klimley et al. 2001). Although we did not determine specific social learning processes, our findings empirically demonstrate the sensitivity to, and likely importance of, social cues in sharks.

These and other recent findings that stress the importance of social behaviour to the efficacy of shark deterrents (O’Connell et al. 2011; Robbins et al. 2011) emphasise the need for further experimentation on how changes in sharks social environment (presence of competing or informed conspecifics) might affect their foraging strategies or performance and exploitation of a novel food source.

As I said, great job - which is of course no wonder!

After all, Tristan is one of Doc's disciples and the whole thing did happen in Bimini as part of a wider endeavor and very much under the supervision and leadership, but undoubtedly also scathing criticism by the great man himself! This is your classical behavioral experiment aimed as testing a previously formulated hypothesis, and this thankfully (and very much unsurprisingly!) involving a control group - as it should be!

Of course we in the Industry knew that already.

There are plenty of examples of Sharks appearing to learn from their conspecifics (and who knows, maybe other species as well?) during baited dives, this from species as vastly different as the Whale Sharks in Oslob or Cendrawasih Bay to, it appears, the Sicklefin Lemons in Moorea.

Here are some examples by Doc himself.

We know from simple observations that throwing a piece of bait to a naïve lemon shark will take about three pieces for that shark to get the idea that the sound of a splash means that food has landed in the water near it. Then you see other lemon sharks watch the smart one and pick it up right away...splash=food.

This is especially so with the larger reef sharks.
It is easy to tell a new, inexperienced (new comer) reef shark from the experienced group. tThe newcomer has no clue when a piece of food is thrown a foot in front of its nose. It just swims on by. A trained shark however will have already associated food=splash and will immediately turn, orient to the sound and gobble up the piece. When the new comer watches the trained group orienting to the sound of bait hitting the water it picks it up immediately and gets it from there on. Additionally the other trained reef shark appear to the sound of the boat when we anchor up at the feeding site with no bait.
They are smart animals but you already know that.

Indeed we do!

We have observed learning in our social Reef Blacktips but above all, in our Bulls where we are convinced that the fact that the newbies follow the correct feeding protocols from the get-go is due to the fact that they have learned to behave correctly by observing the experienced old-timers!

So, what do the findings of the paper mean?

Do they prove that Sharks are intelligent?

No they do not!
They show that juvenile (= an adjective) Lemon Sharks (= a species) are able to learn a task by observing other juvenile Lemons and, as Doc tells me, that they could learn faster than rabbits or cats (= other species) on a conditioned response and could recall the response up to a year.

And what about the other Sharks? No idea!
Hell we don't even know whether those findings extend to adult Lemon Sharks, see the various hypotheses about slower and/or different learning that are being put forth for humans! Maybe Sharks, too, get more set in their ways and are less prone to experimenting as they grow up? I'm asking this as some of our old ladies do things in always the exact same way, likely because they have learned that it works!

My hunch is that if tested, different species will show different results.
And I'm also quite confident that there will be differences at an individual level - and possibly even at the level of gender or life stages, who knows!
I'm also expecting that the results will correlate with the extent to which those species are social (remember this is about social learning - which of course begs the question whether our Bulls are social!), but possibly, also with the extent to which learning is a useful strategy considering the specific Shark's life history - and yes I'm still of the opinion that Whale Sharks come across as being particularly thick!

But one thing is clear, at least to me.
Despite of all those caveats, I too am convinced that far from being the ever lurking instinctive killing machines some quarters would have them be, Sharks are way smarter, and their life history and behavior, way more nuanced and sophisticated - and this paper is yet another step in revealing that fascinating and beautiful tapestry.

Thank you Tristan and thank you Doc!

Our National Geographic Explorer!

The hard life!

Well it was about bloody time!

One of our very own is a National Geographic Explorer!
From the interview with the great man.

The lemon shark has provided me with a career, a loving wife of 42 years, a family, a home, cars, travel, educated my children, and, yes, even today my grandchildren enjoy this wonderful great fish.

Have you guessed?
Yes that would be none other than Doc Gruber, Grand Mufti of Sharks, bon vivant extraordinaire, beloved by his friends and rightfully feared by his enemies!
Here's a nice video listing some of his academic credentials but above all, where he gives invaluable advice (!) to prospective Shark researchers, as in Study Hard!



We have now met a couple of times and I can attest to the fact that apart from knowing everything! that is currently known about Sharks (=heaps but actually, not much), the man is brilliantly intelligent, eminently entertaining and charming, and ludicrously witty - and absolutely and certifiably nuts to boot!

No I'm not alluding to stuff like this - that's just Work!

What I'm alluding to is what he does in his spare time - or does a septuagenarian hammering Porsches over race tracks and flying WW2 planes sound normal to you!


Anyway, I'm certainly digressing - as usual!
What I really wanted to say is that it's great to see his name among all those other illustrious personalities - which of course begs the question, does a veritable revered Nat Geo Explorer have the clout to influence that godawful Shark programming on Nat Geo Wild?
I wish!

Nat Geo interview here.

PS - and here's one more pic! :)