Great white sharks more endangered than tigers

Fewer great white sharks are left in the oceans than there are tigers surviving on Earth.

Canadian expert Dr Ronald O'Dor said the two top predators are almost equally under threat, but the plight of great whites needed greaster attention

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in San Diego, he told how the discovery was made by colleagues from the Census of Marine Life.

He said: "I recently heard a report from the team that's been tagging great white sharks. The estimated total population of great white sharks in the world's oceans is actually less than the number of tigers.

"We hear an awful lot about how endangered tigers are but apparently great white sharks are pretty close to the same level. Some people say I don't care, they eat people, but I think we have to give them a little space to live in.

"Until recently, people thought sharks were bad and there was no urge to save great whites. Now people are beginning to understand that they are rare and that they are a wonderful species."

The same meeting heard from experts warning that seep sea "bottom trawling" was causing untold damage to fragile reef ecosystems around the world.

The heavy fishing nets, dragged along the sea bed on large rubber rollers called "rockhoppers", smashed and flattened coral outcrops that provided vital refuges for fish and other marine species, said marine biologist Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, from the University of Plymouth.

He is calling for concerted international action to ban all bottom trawling from at risk habitats, many of which are yet to be identified.

Work by scientists involved in the Census of Marine Life (CoML) - a major worldwide project cataloguing life in the oceans - is now bringing to light the true extent of the destruction wrought by bottom trawling.

Dr Hall-Spencer, a leading CoML researcher, said: "Less than 1% of the estimated 50,000 seamounts have ever been surveyed and our research visits have revealed pristine coral reefs and many species that are brand new to science.

"However, over the past five years, these surveys have also worryingly revealed that all over the world, deep-sea habitats are suffering severe impacts from bottom trawling down to depths of 1,000 metres and more."

Many of the most threatened sites were cold water coral reefs in temperate zones that are still in the process of being discovered and explored, he said.

You'll be afraid to go back into the water!

Hands up those who want to go cage diving with great whites in South Africa.

Some fantastic footage doing the rounds on email might make you think different (or maybe not). It shows a two ton, 15 foot Great White barreling into a diver's cage in Mexico.



Phew! That was a lucky escape. I still want to go cage diving though!

Sharks are NOT like Jack the Ripper

GREAT white sharks are just like sea-rial killers!

Terror of the seas target victims in the same was as psychopaths!

Er well, not exactly. You could be forgiven for thinking that the much maligned Great White shark was in for another kicking this week with headlines like that.

But they sadly missed the point of research by scientists at the University of Miami into hunting habits of the apex predator.

The scientists did use geographic profiling, a mathematical technique developed as a criminal investigation tool, to investigate the hunting habits of great whites - and found they picked their targets in a highly focused fashion.

They observed the location of 340 shark attacks at Seal Island, in False Bay off the coast of South Africa and used the data to locate the sharks' "anchor points".

The shark scientists found that mature sharks had a well defined search base with an "anchor point" tended to be 100 metres seaward of where the seals accessed and left the island where they lived - but not where the chances of prey interception were greatest rather where there was an optimal balance between detecting prey and capturing it.

Smaller, younger, sharks exhibited more dispersed search patterns and were less successful hunters, possibly indicating that hunting is refined with age or that smaller sharks are excluded from the best areas.

Neil Hammerschlag, from the University of Miami, who conducted the research, emailed sharkdivers blog to set the record straight.

In the posting Shark Science - Run Over by the Media, he wrote: "This study is getting a lot of attention; however it is as misunderstood as sharks.

"The study does not characterize sharks as serial killers in anyway, just that white sharks are more complex than we originally thought. Sharks are constantly swimming, and unlike other animals they do not have the equivalent of a den, nest, or burrow.

"Therefore, establishing the existence (including location, size, and shape) of a search base or “centre of gravity” for a search pattern could provide important insight into their hunting behavior.

"By applying geographic profiling, the study found that sharks are not mindless killers, but are in fact using sophisticated hunting strategies."

The full story is reported in the Journal of Zoology, published by the Zoological Society of London. You can purchase on on-line version or read a more balance piece on the BBC.

Readers of sharkdiver will also be excited by the news that Shark Divers CEO Patric Douglas will unveil the world’s newest white shark aggregation site exclusively for film and television productions on July 4 2009.

Typically divers are encountering up to 10 animals a day in 100 foot visibility.

“I have not seen anything as pristine, accessible, and ready made for television productions since the discovery of Mexico’s Isla Guadalupe in 2001,” said Douglas.

"You only discover new sites like this once every then years.”

So, we can expect a plethora of new great white docs next year then?

jessica Alba fights for great white sharks

First Elle MacPherson, now Jessica Alba.

You've got to hand it to Tinsletown's female elite, they are doing their bit for raising awareness of the plight of endangered underwater species.

The star of scuba diving movie Into the Blue was reported to have been photographed earlier this month putting up posters of great white sharks in Oklahoma, where she is shooting her new movie The Killer Inside Me, in an effort to draw attention to the species' dwindling numbers.

Following an outcry - over the posters not the slaughter of the sharks, heaven forbid there is any outcry to save Jaws - the 28-year-old "Fantastic Four" actress issued an apology for her actions and the owners of the properties on which Alba glued the posters said they didn't want to see her prosecuted.

In her apology released to EW.com, Alba said: “I got involved in something I should have had no part of. I realize that I should have used better judgment and I regret not thinking things through before I made a spontaneous and ill-advised decision to let myself get involved with the people behind this campaign.”

Hell, no Alba. Have the courage of your convictions. You were absolutely right to get involved. Without people in the public eye getting involved, these issues could be missed by the general public until it is too late.

Thanks to the Rad Report, the shark is actually called White Mike and he is the face of the campaign to protect Great Whites.

The posters have been appearing all over LA and Malibu.

In a message on his blog (go and visit, now) White Mike, he said: "Some have asked why these images of the Great White Shark were posted in Oklahoma, a place far away from the slaughtering waters off Ecuador’s Galapagos or the booming shark fin markets of Hong Kong.
"The reason is that illegal shark fin hunting affects the people of Oklahoma. It affects us all.
"There is a dire need for us as a human race to try and stop the devastation of the Great White Shark. International pressure is the only way to do it and that starts in Oklahoma, the heartland of America."

White Mike, if you are reading this, make the posters available for us to download in whatever size is possible, I'm sure there are a few of us in Blighty who will post them around our neck of the woods.

Friday Nonsense

Came across this on the Daily Mail website.



The video on YouTube purports to show a daredevil surfer baiting a Great White Shark to take him for a ride by towing his surfboard along. The video has swept around the world in recent weeks.

Real or hoax, I'll let you decide but it is silly.