The incredible Water Blog

Having been a professional photographer in one of my previous incarnations, I'm a sucker for great pictures.

SeaWayBLOG is all about the "World Wide Water" and the Photo subsection (there are also subsections on Video, Art, News, Travel, Sport and Humor) is a cornucopia of the very best this genre has to offer. As always, click on them in order to appreciate them better.
Amazing idea, amazing presentation!

I've picked a small selection and invite you to go explore for yourself, you'll be amazed and entertained!

Just to start tickling your interest, the pic below is thousands of Penguins (!) and below that, that's from a story about the World's largest bony fish, the magnificient and mysterious King of Herrings from the Oarfish Family.

Enjoy!

Unlucky!

Once again from the UK Telegraph, here comes another interesting series of pictures, this time of a pod of Orcas attacking a mother Grey Whale and calf off the coast of Monterey.

The Gaijin

Well I had to wait for a couple of days for him to upload his latest pictures -and I hear, more are in the pipeline- but I can finally reveal the winner of the Sea&Sea photo contest: non other than the very same patsOn i blogged about in February!

All I can say that Alexander has managed to even surpass his previous feats and turn out a new portfolio of our Sharks that is truly exceptional. You best click on the pix in order to see them in their full glory.

And luckily for us ignoramuses of Cyrillic, his new Fiji blog includes captions in English, enabling us to follow his adventures about camera-biting Tigers (not quite, she barely sniffed) and haircut giving Bull Sharks (quite so).

Having had to personally yank him back from some radical positions in January, this time he behaved like a lamb and was thus upgraded to pole position: very intense but as you can see, the Sharks have a full mouth and are only concerned with getting out of the way.

That's Rusi's shoe by the way.
Just kidding. As far as I know, the last time anybody in Fiji tried to eat a shoe was in 1867 when the fiery reverend Baker met his untimely death inside a lovo. The shoe was chewed on but finally, and I bet, grudgingly rejected and now adorns the display of the Suva museum.

Anyway, haircuts or not, Alexander is quickly becoming a hardened pro, as witnessed by his mind-blowing pictures of this year's Sardine Run: this is high-adrenaline action and hanging out there solo diving in the Big Blue surrounded by feeding predators is nothing for the faint of heart.
But look at the results! This is quite in the league of Doug Perrine's award-winning 2004 picture on the right (yes Sasha, it is, and I know that you'll be pleased by this comment).
As always, well done!!!

So, what's the next step in his quest for perfection?
We just e-mailed and he's come up with a tentative idea of turning the Take-Out into sort of an underwater studio. Certainly possible as much of what we do is carefully choreographed and thus predictable - but watch out for upcoming tales of big Sharks absconding with expensive strobes and the like!
Not that Sasha would have to worry as he's likely to bag many more goodies by swamping the Photo contests with his killer shots!

Looking forward to it - it'll sure be interesting to set up and even more fun to watch!

Lucky!

From the UK Telegraph comes this breathtaking sequence of a lucky baby seal from South Africa's Seal Island. Whow!

Enjoy!

Uh oh ...............

Back in Tonga and the Ocean in front of the house is swarming with Humpback Whales.

Not that I really care, they're just too un-toothy to really tickle my interest.
Of course, I once did do my due diligence, took a swim and came face-to-face with a big female - at which we both looked at each other and decided not to bother. No life-changing experience by any stretch of the imagination, just a boring encounter with a placid and equally boring behemoth.
But I did do it and now I know why I'm gonna continue sticking to Sharks.

The whales are the mainstay of Tonga's tourism and town is bustling with the usual assortment of wide-eyed Palangi, many of which waaaaaaaaaaay waaaaaaaaaaay out there in la-la land, sometimes frighteningly so. But some are sharp and have taken it onto themselves to make a contribution to research and to conservation, and need to be applauded for that. As Wetpixel's Tony Wu whose nice Blog is well worth reading and whose website is displaying an array of breathtaking pictures.

So, I hear you ask, why do I bother writing this post?

The reason is This.

"New Zealand's Great White Sharks migrate to tropical waters off Australia and islands in the Pacific to feed on baby humpback whales, scientists say.
After tracking tagged sharks using GPS, New Zealand fisheries scientists have concluded the giant ocean hunters appear to be regular winter visitors to tropical waters.
Tags have popped up in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and halfway to Tonga and these trans-oceanic migrations to tropical waters have changed perceptions of the sharks as cold water, coastal creatures.
"We think they may be searching for newborn humpback whale calves, because all tags have surfaced in or near known humpback calving sites," National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research fisheries scientist Malcolm Francis said."

Halfway to Tonga? Humpback calving sites?

As in Vava'u, Tonga?

Well well, may we be in for a surprise after already having come across Reef Sharks, Tigers, Silkies, Oceanic Whitetips, Whale Sharks, Lemons, Zebras and Tonga's first ever recorded Bull Sharks?

Quite frankly, I just can't wait......

And the Winner is................

"Kampai" and "Banzai" are the only worlds I know in Japanese.
Guess a shrink would have a helluva time interpreting that rather sinister combination!

Anyway, you may trust me if I tell you that Sea&Sea's 2007-2008 Photo Contest page is total gibberish to me.
Apart from the fact that somebody seems to have earned himself a lot of cool goodies by winning first place with this toothy picture of a Bull Shark from Shark Reef.
I am reliably told that much to the dismay of the Japanese UW photo-yakuza, our mystery photographer is a Japanese-speaking Gaijin infiltrator. I'm also told that the result subverted the traditional Japanese photo estethics which are much better represented by the softness of the shrimp in third place.

And who is the mystery man -or lady-, I hear you ask with bated breath?

None other than ....... but that's another story!

Sex on Shark Reef

Where do they do it?

Indeed, that is the question!
"They" being our Bull Sharks and "it", well, ya know, IT!

When we started analyzing the patterns in 2003, the only thing that was clear is that our Bulls were leaving around October and started to come back in December. Common wisdom had it that they were leaving in order to give birth and mate.

Approx 2,000 data sets later, the pattern is this.

Mid-December sees the arrival of an ever increasing population of all of the large adult females, a few known males like "Whitenose" and "Jaws" and quite a number of sub-adults of both sexes.
Some females display fearsome fresh mating scars that completely heal within a few days literally in front of our eyes.
Some other females are completely emaciated and have an awful skin condition ranging from fungus infestation to algae overgrowth, a clear indication that they have been subjected to fresh water. Bull Sharks are freshwater-tolerant and I may add: "barely", as the freshwater environment clearly strains their metabolism and yes, precipitates the urgent need for a good dermatologist on top of that.

During the course of the year, the numbers increase to an apex in March/April where it is not uncommon to see 30 and more individuals. The females that turned up with scars slowly get bigger and bigger, like "Second" in the picture above (shot this August by Sasha - but that's another story) and the second half of the year features the arrival of an increasing number of sub-adults and some other males like "Blackbeard" and most notably, "Long John" who never arrives before August.
By September, the females are best described as being "fickle": one day they're in yer face and ravenous, the next they barely turn up and keep well to the outskirts whilst the males and the sub-adults are having a feast.
And by mid-October, everybody kind of sneaks off whilst the Grey Reefs and Silvertips move in assertively.

So, what is going on?
Why are the Sharks leaving "home" -the place they have chosen for obviously offering some advantage- in order to expend energy and swim to some other place which is obviously not good enough to be "home"?
In other words, why has Evolution selected for such a wasteful behavior?

The mating scars/pregnant/absent female story seems pretty straightforward: the pregnant females leave to give birth in the nursing areas.
Such areas have been well researched in Florida's Indian River and Australia's Brisbane River. In Fiji, we have well documented reports of seasonal Bull Shark catches in Viti Levu's Rewa river and a big river in Vanua Levu. Interestingly, whereas small Sharks are caught on line, all large Bull Sharks are caught exclusively in nets, as would be expected from otherwise cannibalistic species developing a feeding inhibition towards the end of pregnancy.

Those nursing areas offer clear advantages to the newborn Sharks in that they don't harbor any major predators of Sharks, notably large Sharks and Groupers (except for -how could it be otherwise- the beautiful but always deadly land of Oz, that is) and also feature a large population of suitable prey.
Hence, the disadvantage of leaving "home" is offset by the advantage of an increased chance of successful procreation, and thus passing on one's genes (and notably, the instruction to go walkabout) to the next generation.

But what about the mating?

Mating aggregations and mass spawning are well known for many Fishes.
The disadvantage of having to leave "home" is offset by, to name but a few, the advantages of finding suitable partners; optimizing gene flow; large numbers protecting the Fish and their spawn from annihilation by predation; location and timing -typically, the peak tides at Full and New Moon- optimizing the dispersion of the fertilized eggs.

Carcharhinid Sharks however are not spawning Fish: fertilization is internal, the eggs remain protected inside the body and the need to form schools in order to avoid predation is typically nil. Thus, there seems to be no need for forming mating aggregations.

But how about the need to meet partners and gene flow?
Some Sharks, as Grey Reefs, Silvertips and maybe Scalloped Hammers seem to feature resident populations of mature females and sub-adults whereas the mature males appear to be transient and only turn up in order to perform the dirty deed.
Others, like Whitetip and Blacktip Reefs, feature mixed populations where gene flow may be ensured by the occasional migration of individuals.

When it comes to our Bull Sharks, the jury is still out.
Are the big females resident or even territorial? Probably yes to the former and no to the latter, but we're still determining the range of their small-scale movements in our research with acoustic tags and analyzing aggression patterns that may offer insights into possible territorial behavior.
And what about the males? Here, the difficulty lays in the fact that maybe with the exception of "Whitenose" and "Blackbeard", all regular males appear to be quite small. Is that the normal sexual dimorphism in Bull Sharks or are all of those other males sub-adults?
Are we thus witnessing the Whitetip Reef or the Grey Reef model?

But with that in mind, why do the non-pregnant Bull Sharks leave at all?

The answer may be that strictly speaking, Shark Reef is not really "home".
"Home" may be the lower reaches of Beqa Channel from which the Bulls typically ascend when we prompt them to come in for a snack.

Thus, the story may be this.

• only the pregnant females leave to give birth in the river mouths
• all other Sharks may develop some feeding inhibition as the non-pregnant females get into heat, this maybe triggered by the female pheromones and maybe developed in order not to start devouring each other when they bite and latch on during copulation. Hence, they don't turn up but may remain deep down in Beqa Channel instead. That is where mating occurs and hence, that would account for the freshness of the scars when they turn up again. Yes, that's a whole heap of "maybes" but it's at least a viable initial Hypothesis.

And here is where Juerg and Gary (yes, he of the french cheese) come in.

Recent visitors to Shark Reef were graced by the sight of a speargun-toting Hulk Hogan look-alike nailing a dozen Bull Sharks that subsequently reappeared carrying small acoustic tags. In view of the hunger strike during the mating season, we had no choice but to deploy some tags externally, this specifically to test the local mating Hypothesis.
The tags will remain active for up to one year but typically fall off well before that time, likely in the first months of 2009.
Should the Sharks be hiding in Beqa Channel, a wide array of receivers spanning all the way from the Navua River to Serua Reef will finally give away their little dirty secret.

Intrigued?
So am I - keep watching this space!

The same old Allegations

As so often, the Shark Divers have started a thread and I would like to pick it up as follows.

Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa is a respectable institution and their Trademark, a coveted distinction for Tourism operators of that country. Among many other things, it implies that the people whose land, natural resources, labour, knowledge and culture are used for Tourism activities, actually benefit from Tourism.
Sound familiar?
Look now further than the Shark Reef Marine Reserve Project with its holistic approach to Conservation.

FTTA have decided to look into Shark Tourism in South Africa and have published this important position paper on the matter.
Before I unleash, let me categorically state that it is a good one: balanced, fair, unbiased, pragmatic, it explores the full scope of the issues at hand and draws the right conclusions. FTTA are the first ones to admit that they are no experts in Shark Tourism and carefully avoid taking any positions with respect to the usual controversies.
This of course is the way it should be and they need to be commended for that approach.

And yet, the usual allegations raise their ugly head unchallenged.

Let me try and sum up the current state of affairs, at least how most of us in the Shark Diving Industry see it. Yes I've already blogged about it but if left unanswered, these allegations will, and have already developed into Urban Legends, and then, the "Truth".
It's all about memetic Evolution - check it out, fascinating.

But first, lets get rid of the question whether Shark diving increases the risk of Shark incidents.
Duh?
Yes of course it does!
And so does swimming, surfing, spear fishing, whatever!
The simple reason for that is that Shark incidents have one precondition: Sharks and people have to be in the same place at the same time, that place being the Ocean. Equally obvious is the fact that there will be some correlation between the number of people frequenting the Sea and the number of incidents - thus, any increase in people implies an increase in risk.
This is so trivial, it is painful!

What to do?
Well, how about looking at the airline industry: aviation increases the risk of plane crashes (Hellooo.....). Confronted with such mind-boggling insights, do we run and close down the industry? Or, do we instead require that commercial airline operators conform to the strictest safety procedures possible?
This is precisely what has to be asked from us. And let me re-iterate that safety procedures will always remain species- and situation-specific and will always imply a judgment call by the operator.

Now, to the actual debate, this in order of increasing complexity.

Yes, many of us do use bait to attract the Sharks.
Although Shark diving in unbaited conditions is certainly possible, predictable encounters can only be expected where the species are resident (or maybe, territorial) - as in Grey Reefs and Silvertips; or, where the lay of the land, or special conditions aggregate the Sharks - as on the sea mounts in the eastern Pacific, during the yearly congregations of Whale Sharks in the Caribbean and Australia or at the cleaning stations of Thresher Sharks in the Philippines.
Other than that, one is left to the vagaries of chance encounters : great when conducting coral dives but just not quite good enough to justify mounting a commercial operation specifically targeting Sharks.

The issue this raises is that of Conditioning.
By that, one implies that luring in the Sharks will change their behavior - well, again, Yes........... Why otherwise would we bother doing it?
The natural behavior of most Sharks is not to approach divers unless specifically motivated to do so - and that's precisely what we are trying to achieve, to motivate them. Incidentally, in our specific case, we also try to condition our Sharks to follow a uniform and largely predictable routine and to stay away from the clients.

"Best practice" among cage diving operations apparently consists in just teasing, but never actually handing any bait to the Sharks.
Were I a Shark hugger, I would immediately object that letting the Sharks waste precious energy on fruitless "hunts" is to be rejected as it is likely harmful to the animals. But of course, that would be totally besides the point - the point being that common wisdom has it that this will prevent the Sharks from associating humans with food via so-called positive reinforcement. We shall come on to that later.

Apparently, according to the FTTA paper (and news to me), some quarters even contend that just teasing, but never feeding the Sharks could even be regarded as negative conditioning: the frustrated animals will learn to avoid those situations.
Sound plausible to you? Would the cage divers use that technique and bother to schlepp along all that bait if they believed it would eventually chase away the Sharks?
C'mon........

Leaves Conditioning via Positive Reinforcement, the big no-no.
Yes, I confess, this is precisely what we do!
We reward the Sharks whenever they approach, very much in the hopes that over time, more and more of them will turn up for a meal - which of course, being smart Apex Predators, they do!
We do so in order to show them to our clients - as opposed to, as I shall never tire to repeat, Fishermen who do exactly the same thing in order to catch and then kill them.
Get the hint? Who has the way biggest, and most negative impact on the animals? Are we going to abolish fishing as a consequence? I wish!

But now, the saga continues: apparently, feeding the Sharks teaches them to associate humans with food.
It is never said expressis verbis, but the subliminal message is that the so conditioned Sharks will not only associate, no, they will learn to regard humans as food and then start devouring anybody chancing to enter the waters they live in.
All intuitively plausible - but is it really so?
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist, so please allow me to cite the Great Man himself: "Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science."

Why "humans"?
If we disregard the bait which is clearly the primary attractant and conditioning factor, is it not fair to assume that the strongest conditioning factor may well be the engine noise? Is it not so that some operators have learned to rev up the boat engines to "ring the dinner bell", and this with great success?
And if so, So What?

The "what" apparently is this.
This kind of signal, or even the mere presence of humans, are supposed to trigger a Pavlovian reflex: the Sharks will become excited, motivated and hungry and this will precipitate the abovementioned nefarious consequences, especially when no food is being offered.

And this is precisely the very point where Intuition is leading to Conjecture and Myth.

Nothing whatsoever, not the objective data about Shark incidents on, or in the vicinity of Shark feeding locations, nor the collective subjective perceptions of all Shark Diving Operators I've ever talked to supports in any way those allegations. This despite the fact that one would expect precisely that to happen, as a result of an increase of potential encounters and thus, risk - remember the first trivial argument?

To make an example, what we experience on our Shark Dive is this.
When we get to Shark Reef, we start by baiting the surface where the Trevallies, Rainbow Runners and Bohars (but never any Shark!) will hit the bait and, we believe, attract the Sharks to the resulting commotion. Upon getting into the water, we may, or may not, see some of our non-resident (at least not at the depth and location where we feed) animals: Tiger Sharks, Bull Sharks, Lemon Sharks and Nurse Sharks.
Have they been attracted by the engine noise? By the action at the surface? By us entering the water? Or did they just happen to be there anyway? Frankly, we don't know - yet. But we're working on it.
During the dive, the numbers of Sharks will increase as we continue feeding the big fish and later, the Sharks themselves. But once we decide to stop the feeding, the Sharks will retreat and disappear within minutes - not get frustrated and attack us in retaliation. This after close to ten years of positive reinforcement.
And when we go to Shark Reef without food, some Sharks may turn up for a quick cursory flyby but then disappear, never to be seen again.

Mind you, the above is merely our perception.
Interestingly enough, having once taken along an anti-feeding advocate and scientist, these very same observations did not dispel, but instead reinforce her reservations. As always, perceptions turn out to be highly subjective.

This can only be resolved by proper scientific research.
Remember the Scientific Method?

To the readers in general: watch this space!

To the colleagues amongst you.
Guys, we're in this together. This nonsense threatens all of us and needs to be stopped. We have the resources, animals, locations and opportunities enabling us to collect the relevant data. This may cost us some time and money, and we may well end up with answers we don't like - but if so, we will learn something new, as we should always be willing , and eager to do.
And we will get even better and safer in the process.

Let's do it - it's the only way forward.

The proper Way

I've recently ranted about frivolous and heartless science and about Shark "experts" proffering ludicrous opinions instead of doing what is to be expected from proper scientists, and that is, to use the Scientific Method:

• ask Questions
• make Observations
• develop a Hypothesis (that is, a theoretical Explanation)
• make Predictions and then
• collect, analyze and interpret the necessary Data (that is, the Evidence, often via Experiments) in order to verify or falsify (that is, to test) that Hypothesis.
• only then, publish the results (as a Model or Theory) and have them re-tested, often by peers.

That is the only acceptable Technique to separate Truth from Belief, Science from Opinion, Superstition, Myth and Religion, fact from fiction, wheat from chaff. Worth keeping in mind when confronted with yet another piece of unproven conjecture.

Apart from "our" very own Juerg and his research on Shark Reef, here are some institutions and individuals who do serious research on the topics of the past rants:

Mexico: Dr Leonardo Castillo from Mexico's National Fisheries Institute has begun equipping thousands of Sharks with satellite, radio and plastic tags to better understand the cause for a recent spate of incidents on the Mexican Pacific Coast. I look forward to his explanations after the results have come in, as it should be. Much more tedious than taking a quick trip to Mexico in order to give a few interviews - but oh so much more credible!

Greenland Sharks: Canada's three Oceans are frequented by up to 41 species of Sharks.
GEERG, the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group is currently conducting Research on 3 of them, the Greenland, Basking and Blue , and planning research on the four Lamnids Great White, Shortfin Mako, Porbeagle and Salmon Shark. As far as I can discern, no frivolous killing involved.
The Canadian Shark Research Laboratory conducts research on some of the same Sharks, mostly by examining catches by local fishermen.
Both websites are a treasure trove of information, along with a nifty interactive Shark identification key.




And then, there's of course TOPP, the herculean effort of trying to tag, and thus record the movements of the Pacific Predators, be it cetaceans, fish, Sharks, birds or reptiles. It never ceases to intrigue and amaze me, be it by its sheer scope or by the wealth of information it regularly unveils.

Plenty to discover, plenty to learn.
Enjoy!

Tiny

Readers of The Song of the Dodo know that Islands are often homes to very large (as in the Dodo, the largest pigeon, on Mauritius or Dragons on Komodo) or very small animals.

Case in point: the latest herpetological discoveries from the Caribbean.

A small island off the coast of Dominica harbors the World's smallest lizard whilst Barbados, the smallest snake.
So far, that is - as always in science, new discoveries are bound to loom.



Like this one: researchers report the discovery of more than 100,000, hitherto unknown Western Lowland Gorillas (the kind mostly kept in Zoos) from two areas in the northern part of the Congo. Yes, they remain threatened by habitat degradation, the hunt for bush meat and Ebola, but it triplicates the estimates for the species nevertheless.

Alas, no such good news for Sharks.
But still, a good day for anybody interested in Nature.

A good Man

When one is marooned in the Friendly Islands that are currently suffering from acute Coronation Fever, CNN remains the lifeline to what's happening in the world at large.

Imagine my surprise, and delight, when this special report popped up in the middle of a news program.
Well written, filmed and narrated, it features SOSF scientist Alison Kock and her groundbreaking research about Great Whites.
A further episode on Sharks, this time for Planet in Peril and featuring Mark Rutzen, has been announced for December.

Great to see such a piece on mainstream TV - Shark Conservation has sure come a long way! And: he may be CNN's prettyboy, but Anderson Cooper is obviously a good Man.

You can watch the special episode here and a video about the upcoming program here.
And then, there's this slide show by staff photographer Jeff Hutchens - and check out his blog for more amazing images!

Enjoy!