A few weeks ago, I wrote about a proposed shark cull in Western Australia and asked for your help to oppose it. By the end of the Support Our Sharks anti-cull campaign, the petition had almost 19,000 signatures from dedicated shark conservationists from around the world, including many of our readers. After some initial anti-shark coverage in the media, the Support Our Sharks team was able to utilize public pressure and expert opinion to change the tone. The result was some excellent pro-shark and pro-science stories (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here for examples).
In response to the media campaign waged by Support Our Sharks, Western Australia’s Department of Fisheries issued a press release today:
“ the State Government did not support beach netting at this point in time…consideration of other strategies had ruled out a major cull of white sharks to reduce numbers.”
In other words, the cull of great whites and other sharks is no longer being considered by the Western Australian Government! Thanks for all your help, everyone, and congratulations to Support Our Sharks!
Manta rays are true gentle giants; though they can grow more than 20 feet wide from wingtip to wingtip, they eat only plankton. Swimming with these animals is a rare thrill for SCUBA divers, and manta-viewing ecotourism is worth over $100 million each year. Like many species of sharks, manta rays grow slowly and reproduce rarely. According to Dr. Nick Dulvy of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, “ they give birth to an average of one offspring every two years…they are a long-lived species with little capacity to cope with modern fishing methods.” They also migrate across huge distances, regularly crossing between national boundaries and spending much of their time on the high seas, making management difficult.
Photo credit: David Shiffman (Georgia Aquarium)
Although their biology cannot support a large-scale fishery and their behavior makes any fishery inherently difficult to manage, manta rays are very much in demand. At least part of them is: their gill rakers. According to Lucy Harrison, program officer for the IUCN Shark Specialist group, “Increasing demand for these fishes’ filter-feeding system for traditional Chinese medicinal purposes, especially in Hong Kong, is rapidly driving down their population everywhere.”
By some measures, the global population of manta rays has declined by more than 30% in recent decades, with some local populations facing much larger declines. Earlier this week, an IUCN Shark Specialist Group team led by Andrea Marshall has concluded that both species of manta ray (the giant manta Manta birostrisand the reef manta Manta alfredi) should be declared Vulnerable* to extinction.
The IUCN Shark Specialist Group recommends that several steps be taken to protect mantas from further population declines. These include discussing the value of international conservation treaties, such as CMS and CITES, for both species as well as national-level policy changes in countries that fish for mantas. Some of these proposals may benefit from the support of the online conservation community, so please stay tuned! I’ll continue to report on these suggested policies as they moves forward.
* “Vulnerable” in the context of an IUCN Red List status should be capitalized, as should other IUCN Red List statuses. For more information on what “Vulnerable” means, please visit the Red List website here.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 11th, 2011
So I’m sitting in my office revising a manuscript when Dr. Bik over at Deep Sea News dropped some serious overfishing beats on me. In case you thought there was only one overfishing themed rap parody video out there, we’ve got some news for you:
Warning: video contains some graphic footage of sea turtle and shark finning.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 11th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
Jarrett Byrnes, the legendary blogger from I’m a Chordata, Urochodata, is interested in understanding how global change affects our oceans. He has access to an enormous, unprecedented data set from 30 years of fish surveys around the Channel Islands. There’s just one problem. This data set has been produced over 30 years by many different ecologists, in a host of different environmental conditions. There’s a error rate associated with it.
Jarrett has a solution, and that solution is calculating the calibration rate for the data set by sending divers out to perform repeated samplings of the same area, and then use that data to determine the error rate associated with marine surveys. I really like this projects because it involves publically available, open access data, and has the potential to unlock a monumental data set which can then be used to understand the changes that have occurred over the last 30 years. Go take a look at his project page and help out if you can.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 10th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
Levi Lewis is a graduate student interested in how humans activities alter the ecology, health, and resilience of habitat-forming species. He has assembled an interdisciplinary team to study coral reef development around the island of Maui. Funding will be used to support travel, equipment, maintenance, and analysis.
You can check out Levi’s blog, accretinglife, where he discusses this project and his motivations in more detail. Go check out Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs and make a donation to help out a worthy project.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 10th, 2011
Yesterday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council voted to reduce the catch of Menhaden by as much as 37%. Menhaden, often referred to as the “most important fish in the sea” have been declining precipitously over the last several decades, due largely to the Menhaden reduction industry, which is now supported by a single company. Several graphs have been produced recently to illustrate this decline, including this incredibly informative illustration. Despite this attention, most of these reports have missed the big picture. Amy and myself have been thinking quite a bit about shifting baselines recently, and Menhaden represent what may be the most extreme example of this phenomenon.
The population of Menhaden along the eastern seaboard crashed in 1879 a full century earlier than the decline documented here. In it’s heyday, the menhaden industry was catching seven hundred million fish annually. Last years harvest was barely 450 million. These numbers belie a massive ecologic change. While the historic menhaden industry was based north of Cape Cod, our current menhaden production focusses on the mid-Atlantic seaboard and is slowly moving south, chasing the remaining fish. The population that today has finally received protection is a remnant of the once massive foundation of the pelagic ecosystem.
Reprinted below is our original article, the Menhaden of History.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 10th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
Ross Whippo is a graduate student at the University of British Colombia interested in the ecology of northeast Pacific subtidal zone. His research explores the connections between seagrass habitat and the surrounding environment. He is looking at the export of seagrass into marine food webs using a combination of biomass surveys and biomarkers to trace energy flow.
Photo by Andrew Huang, http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3795-behold-the-power-of-seagrass
I like that this project combines classical ecology–actually measuring the biomass of seagrass derived materials moving through ecosystems–and more modern food web studies that use biomarkers to quantify the contribution of seagrass primary production at various trophic levels. Go check out Ross’s project page and consider kicking a little rocket fuel his way.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 9th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
Lindsey Peavey is a graduate student at the University of California (and formerly from the Duke University Marine Lab) who studies the ecology of large marine vertebrates, including sea turtles. She is currently tracking the foraging behavior of Olive Ridley sea turtles in the open ocean. Funding for this project will go towards covering travel expenses, satellite tracking tags, and supporting research interns.
As a nice bonus, her home institute will match funding, so your donation will count double. It’s a good enough project that we’ll even forgive her misuse of the term “deep” for “open ocean”, because we can’t all be as poetic as deep-sea biologists. Go check out Lindsey’s project page and pitch in to help a new graduate student get her research off the ground.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 9th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
Doctor Zen is a biologist who studies brains and behavior using crustaceans. He is studying the invasive marbled crayfish, bizarre species of crayfish that are all female and reproduce asexually. There are no known wild populations, marbled crayfish are only known from the pet trade and invasive populations. Funding for this project will be used to collect slough crayfish, a closely related species, to be used to study the origins of asexual reproduction.
You can listen to a fascinating interview with Doctor Zen discussing some of his other research projects - Zen, Zombies, and, Ziplessness. Doctor Zen is also a veteran science blogger and writes at NeuroDojo, Marmorkrebs, and the incredibly valuable Better Posters blog. Head on over to Doctor Zen’s project page and take a look.
By Southern Fried Scientist, on November 9th, 2011
#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.
This pilot study, led by an interdisciplinary team from the University of California and French Polynesia, will send a graduate student to the island of Moorea to interview stakeholders around the island in order to understand how residents understand and experience climate change. They will also produce a map of climate change “hotspots” areas that are exceptionally valuable and exceptionally vulnerable to climate change.
I like this project because it involves local researchers in French Polynesia, the support they’re asking for directly contributes to a graduate student’s thesis work, and they clearly have a vision for a much larger project that this will feed into. Go take a look at their project page and consider contributing to a worthy study.
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10 misrepresentations about climate change
Threatened gentle giants: both species of manta ray added to the IUCN Red List
Threatened gentle giants: both species of manta ray added to the IUCN Red List
Threatened gentle giants: both species of manta ray added to the IUCN Red List
Threatened gentle giants: both species of manta ray added to the IUCN Red List
Threatened gentle giants: both species of manta ray added to the IUCN Red List