Is scientist using "inhumane" tagging methods on Great White sharks?

Were you able to watch the National Geographic special, "White Shark Expedition," on Monday night -- and if so, what do you think of the methods utilized by researcher Michael Domeier at remote Guadalupe Island off Baja California?

If you live in the Bay Area, you might also have viewed an ABC News program that was spawned by an incident involving Domeier's team using the same methods at the Farallon Islands off San Francisco. The program featured experts who were critical of the methods, which involve using a team of anglers and a large baited hook attached to a line with buoys.

(There's also a film crew, hence the National Geographic special and related episodes to air next summer.)

The hooked shark struggles until it's completely worn out. It's then lifted onto a platform, where a sophisticated tracking tag is bolted into its dorsal fin. A large hose is used to flush water through the shark's gills, so it can breathe throughout a process that can take 20 minutes.

The sharks usually are hooked in the corner of the mouth -- because of the 24-inch circle hook's design --but in at least one case at the Farallon Islands a shark had to be set free with part of the hook lodged deep in its throat.

The specialized tags have a life span of up to six years, providing real-time data and pinpointing precise locations of migrating sharks. They're important, Domeier says, for researchers seeking a clearer picture of these mysterious predators' life history.

I watched both programs and from a non-scientist's viewpoint (mine) the methods appear overly intrusive and harmful to a species of shark that is protected by federal law in the U.S. Given the extent of research already underway on white sharks by renowned scientists at the Farallones, I was surprised to learn that Domeier had even been granted access to the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.

Said sanctuary superintendent Maria Brown on the ABC News program: "This research helps us protect white sharks. I equated it to ... it felt like what it's like when I go to the dentist; when you go in, you get a cavity filled. It's something that maybe you don't want to go do, but you do it, it's quick, it's over, it's done."

It's not that quick; it involves a giant hook and tiring the predators to the extent they can no longer struggle. Besides, experts from various universities have already learned where these sharks go when they leave the islands -- to a vast, featureless area in the mid-Pacific, and some venture beyond Hawaii. Why they go and what they do there, however, remains unclear.

Like ABC News, I talked to Peter Klimley, a UC Davis professor and one of the world's leading shark researchers. He's against Domeier's methods and called them unnecessary. He said lifting so large a creature from the water Is potentially harmful. He added that pregnant females might be especially vulnerable to the technique. Klimley also expressed concern about how other scientists might be perceived by viewers of the National Geographic special.

"For the most part we are compassionate and we do care about how we handle the animals we work with," he said.

Domeier, president of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, defended his methods and said, via e-mail: "I can unequivocally say that we have tagged and released 17 white sharks in the past two years and every single one has survived. The decision to use these tags was not trivial; the data we obtain from them can be gathered no other way, and the resulting multi-year tracks are going to reveal life history characteristics that will rewrite white shark life history."

Domeier also defended using a team of fishermen headed by big-game angler Chris Fischer, who runs Fischer Productions, and an actor that accompanied the group to Guadalupe Island.

"The reality is this: Without the involvement of the media on this project there would be no project," Domeier said. "The research is hugely expensive and the only way to pay for it is to involve National Geographic and Fischer Productions."

-- Pete Thomas

Photo: Crew member Chad Kiesel, left, and angler Chris Fischer tag a 14-foot female great white shark at Guadalupe Island. The hydration hose in the shark's mouth is designed to keep the predator alive while the team measures and tags it and takes blood samples. Credit: Chris Ross / National Geographic Channel

Huge Great White shark caught off Guadalupe Island

"Expedition Great White" airs tonight at 9 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel, and if the accompanying photo is an indication, the footage ought to be spectacular.

The location is Guadalupe Island, 160 miles west of Baja California, a truly spectacular destination and one of the world's largest seasonal gathering places for adult great white sharks. That's where researcher Michael Domeier has been studying the apex predators, and using satellite tags to determine their migration patterns and other habits.

And it's where TV fishing personality Chris Fischer got to play the role of angler -- and literally come face to face with a 4,600-pound white shark -- during a monumental capture aboard his 126-foot mothership, named Ocean.

"Like in the movie 'Jaws,' the first time we saw a shark come in and eat the bait and then take off and drag the buoys under and across the water it was a life-changing moment as an angler," Fischer said. "The experience of capturing and releasing giant great white sharks is nothing similar to an angling experience of capturing large pelagic fish. There's a sense of history, a sense of awe, humility and humbleness."

Domeier is a legitimate researcher, but some might question the methods: hooking and hoisting incredibly large sharks from the water -- even if for only brief periods and if great care is utilized -- for tagging, measuring and DNA sampling.

Domeier, however, assures that great care is utilized and that "this is a show about real science ... not science created for TV, which is so often the case."

Tonight's episode is part of a longer series that will air next summer and undoubtedly will shed significant light on the lifestyle of one of the world's most notorious and mysterious predators.

-- Pete Thomas

Photo: Crew member Jody Whitworth lifts the snout of a great white shark as Capt. Brett McBride removes hydration hose that keeps the predator alive while it's on deck. Credit: National Geographic Channel / Chris Ross

Woman fights off Great White shark!

An Australian woman has survived an attack by a Great White shark by beating it with a paddle after it knocked her off a surf ski.

Linda Whitehurst, the shark's intended victim, said: "I thought this is it, he is going to grab my leg. I had my blade (paddle) and I just kept punching, punching, punching."

She suffered only small lacerations on her right arm in the fight with the 8ft-long shark.

She then managed to scrambling back onto her surf ski and paddling to shore at Byron Bay's famous surfing beach, "The Pass", on Australia's east coast.

A 3m Great White shark was the victim of a...shark attack!

Concerns were raised after a 3 m great white shark was found dead with two huge bites taken out of its body. Experts believe the bites were made by an even larger predatory fish.

Swimmers have been warned to stay out of the waters off Stradbroke Island, north of Brisbane.

“It certainly opened up my eyes. I mean the shark that was caught is a substantial shark in itself,” Jeff Krause of Queensland Fisheries told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

Surfers have reacted to the news of the shark attack with shock.

“Whatever attacked and took chunks out of this big shark must be massive,” said Ashton Smith, 19. “I’ve heard about the big one that’s lurking out there somewhere.

Researchers share their findings about the migratory patterns of Great White sharks

Stanford scientists are learning a great deal about great white sharks.

Scientists at the Hopkins Marine Station have concluded that great white sharks, like salmon, have a specific migratory pattern. Their research, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Nov. 4, also found that Pacific white sharks, genetically distinct from other great whites, are swimming in the San Francisco Bay.

Prof. Barbara Block, who facilitated and co-authored the study in collaboration with scientists from UC-Davis, among others, compared the decade-long observation of great whites in the Pacific Ocean to studies of lions and tigers in Africa.

“We’re doing [the study] on the largest ocean in the planet – it was a tall task,” Block said. She and other marine scientists tagged a total of 179 great white sharks using Pop Up Satellite Archival Tags (PATs) and monitored their swimming in the Pacific.

The PATs, according to doctoral student in biology, field project leader and co-author Chris Perle, allowed for the sharks to be tracked via satellite. Perle, who helped attach approximately 20 tags to the sharks, explained in an e-mail to The Daily that each tag is pre-programmed to “pop-off” the shark and send data back for analysis. The sharks’ travel is then measured by the light and sea surface temperature data.

Researchers found that great white sharks travel from the central California coast out into the open ocean to Hawai’i and a nearby popular location dubbed the “White Shark Café.”

“What we learned the most about the white sharks was that they were making round trips – 4,000 nautical mile trips,” Block said. “But they were coming back with precision to the place we let them go.”

In an e-mail to The Daily, Bing Director in Human Biology Carol Boggs said the research offered a clearer conception of the relationship of sharks to their environment.

“It is cool that we’re discovering that large marine organisms behave more like what we’re used to thinking of as standard for large terrestrial animals, with defined geography for the population, and even something resembling individual ‘home ranges,’” Boggs said.

“This blows the idea out of the water that the ocean is a vast, trackless melting pot,” she added.

Great white sharks leave from “hot spots” on the shore around where sea lions and elephant seals gather to feed. Using additional acoustic tags acting as a microchip that can be transmitted from 300 meters away, the sharks’ shore movements were tracked by receivers sunk at the bottom of the ocean.

“We call it ‘homing infidelity,’” Block added. “Just like a salmon going up the stream, we didn’t know white sharks had a home spot.”

According to postdoctoral fellow and co-author Salvador Jorgensen, scientists were already familiar with the fact that white sharks migrate. The main discovery is the consistency in these migratory routes, which Jorgensen called “a virtual highway,” and that the sharks did not venture on to other areas of the Pacific.

“This was further confirmed with genetics data based on maternally inherited mtDNA markers, suggesting that we are looking at a distinct population that is demographically isolated from other known populations of white sharks in the Indo-Pacific (i.e. South Africa and Australia/New Zealand),” Jorgensen wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Geneticist Carol Reeb, a research associate in biology and co-author, also determined that Pacific white sharks are genetically distinct within their species. She found the difference by comparing a previous study of great white shark genetic sequences from South Africa and New Zealand with the data Jorgensen collected.

The population of white sharks off of the California coast has a 200,000 year-old ancestry with Australian sharks, migrating during the Pleistocene epoch period at the same time humans migrated out of Africa.

“[The Pacific white sharks] didn’t really go anywhere else which was interesting because these are highly migratory animals and they have the potential to go anywhere in theory,” Reeb said.

Male sharks were previously considered to be free-roaming. Conversely, female sharks, according to Reeb, are known to be philopatric, meaning they return to their original birthplaces. This study refutes the original behavioral predictions and confirms a pattern among both sexes.

Reeb is currently working on a similar study with Mexican sharks to determine if they display distinct behaviors and potentially different genes as well. Boggs, who works in population dynamics, finds the potential for further species conservation in this genetic discovery.

“The result that the ‘local’ population is genetically distinct, with a very old separation date from other populations of the same species, is both interesting and surprising,” Boggs said. “It indicates that these sharks may be adapted to the environment of the northeastern Pacific, which has implications for conservation efforts.”

The tracking devices made an additional observation that many found to be more surprising. Great white sharks were detected swimming as far in the San Francisco Bay as the Golden Gate Bridge. However, many of the scientists working on the study were not at all astonished with this finding.

“We learned this only because a row of sensors set up by our colleagues to detect salmon migrations was compatible with our tags,” Jorgensen wrote. “So it was unanticipated but not entirely surprising.”

Five out of 75 great white sharks were detected up to one mile inside the Bay, chalking up to 0.07 percent of the total tag detections in the study.

Surfer attacked by Great White shark

Last night, during a freesurf session at Lagunas (north of Santa Cruz, where the O'Neill Cold Water Classic is happening right now), pro surfer Eric Geiselman was struck by what is believed to be a great white shark.

Apparently his board was immediately snapped in half but luckily the surfer escaped with no harm. Check out more info about the terrifying incident and some words from the man himself on the link below:

Eric Geiselman Gets Attacked by Shark

Great White sharks spotted on Oregon Coast

Why are we hearing about great white shark sightings off the Oregon coast?

One was even spotted in three feet of water. And surfers tell KATU News the sharks are coming right up to the surf line. One, believed to be 16 to 18 feet long, swam right between short boarders at South Beach State Park, just outside of Newport.

So what's going on? Why are they here?

One reason for the increase is because the water is warm right now, so the great white is here to feed. And scientists expect their numbers have probably grown since they've been federally protected from being killed since the 1970s.

Then there's the fact that there are more people out in the water off the Oregon coast than ever before.

Shark researchers say great white sharks are more curious than anything when it comes to people in the water. It is believed, however, that they will mistake a surfer sitting on a surfboard for a sea lion and that's when the Great Whites will sometimes go in for a bite.

You often hear how a person was bitten by a shark and then it swam away. Researchers don't know if that's because the shark got a taste of a person and didn't like the flavor or if they're trying to let their prey lose strength before they go back for more.

Monterey Bay Aquarium released another Great White shark

A great white shark was released back into the wild at Monterey Bay on Wednesday after spending nearly three months at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.The release marks the fifth time the aquarium has successfully exhibited and released a great white shark.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Aquarium staff released the young, female shark in offshore waters near the southern tip of Monterey Bay just after sunrise.The shark had been collected on Aug. 12 near Malibu after it got caught in fishing nets.Images: Great White Shark Released Into WildIn 50 years of attempts worldwide, the Monterey Bay Aquarium remains the only institution to have a great white shark on exhibit for more than 16 days and then successfully return the animal to the ocean.“I’ve always said that these animals will tell us when it’s time to put them back to the ocean. Now was clearly the time,” said Randy Hamilton, vice president of husbandry for the aquarium. “Her health is excellent, and we learned a lot while she was with us. Based on past experience, we have every expectation that she’ll do well after release.”The shark grew from 5 feet 3 inches and just under 80 pounds to 5 feet 5 inches and 100 pounds during its time on exhibit at the aquarium.During Halloween weekend, the shark received a bite wound and was observed chasing scalloped hammerhead sharks in the exhibit. A Galapagos shark was bitten and injured by the great white, Hamilton said. “We monitor the behavior of great white sharks very closely while they’re on exhibit,” he said. “When we saw a new pattern of aggressive behavior, we decided it was best to release her.”The exhibit of great white sharks at the aquarium is part of an effort to raise awareness and change attitudes toward the ocean predators, aquarium officials said.

Northeastern Pacific Ocean: Isolated migrations of Great White sharks have been discovered

In a new research, scientists have found that the migratory behaviors of the white shark has lead to the formation of isolated populations in the northeastern Pacific Ocean that are genetically distinct from sharks elsewhere in the world.

White sharks are a large, highly mobile species, said Salvador Jorgensen, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanfords Hopkins Marine Station.

They can go just about anywhere they want in the ocean, so its really surprising that their migratory behaviors lead to the formation of isolatedpopulations, he added.

Scientists with the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program combined satellite tagging, passive acoustic monitoring and genetic tags to studywhite sharks popularly known as great white sharks in the North Pacific.

The researchers used a combination of satellite and acoustic tags to follow the migrations of 179 individual white sharks between 2000 and 2008.

These sharks were adults or sub-adults that ranged in size up to 4,000 pounds, and were individually tagged at sites along the central California coast, including the Gulf of the Farallones, Tomales Bay and Ano Nuevo.

The electronic tags reveal that the sharks spend the majority of their time in three areas of the Pacific: the North American shelf waters of California; the slope and offshore waters around Hawaii; and an area calledthe White Shark Caf, located in the open ocean approximately halfway between the Baja Peninsula and the Hawaiian Islands.

The research team placed acoustic listening receivers on the ocean floor at sites thought to be high residency areas, or hot spots.

By attaching 78 acoustic tags that create a unique ping or acoustic code for each tagged shark, the researchers were able to detect when thewhite sharks came within 250 meters (820 feet) of a receiver.

This allowed the researchers to discern their pattern of coastal movements in high detail.

The tags revealed that often sharks had favorite sites where they would remain resident for up to 107 days, although they occasionally would make brief visits to the other nearshore hot spots.

Also, genetics techniques were used to examine the relationships of the California sharks to all other white sharks examined globally.

Studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA sequences show that the populations are distinct, and suggest that the northeastern Pacific population may have been founded by a relatively small number of sharks in the late Pleistocene within the last 200,000 years or so.

According to Molecular geneticist Carol Reeb, a research associate at Stanford, Even though we know they travel great distances, their paths are surprisingly constrained to specific routes. This explains how a highly migratory marine species becomes a genetically isolated population.

Scientist thrilled by presence of Great White sharks

The great white sharks sighted off Orleans and Chatham last week sent bathers scrambling from the waters but one man was running in the other direction; Dr. Greg Skomal.

Skomal is a marine biologist with the Division of Marine Fisheries, based on Martha’s Vineyard who specializes in sharks. He enlisted harpoon ace Bill Chaprales of Marstons Mills, captain of the EZYDUZIT to use his skills to help imbed high tech tags in five of the sharks.

They did that a week and a half ago, tagging an eight-footer and 10-footer on Saturday Sept. 5, and three more on Monday Sept. 7, including a 15-footer. A spotter crew located the sharks from a plane piloted by George Breen.

These five great white sharks are making history as the first to carry the electronic pop-up tags in the North Atlantic. They have been tagged in the Pacific.

“It’s a species that not only is poorly understood in the Atlantic but one for which information is essential to get a good management plan in place,” Skomal said. “I’m excited to get five tags in place.”

After attending a conference last week Skomal is back on Martha’s Vineyard and he’d love to add a few more sharks to the database. The stormy weather prevented any more tagging last week but so far the sharks have been shy.

“We haven’t been able to locate any others,” he admitted. “We had northeast winds for four days and could get out and our pilot couldn’t see anything because of all the rain. When we were out last week we saw at least two or three other sharks that were not tagged so we knew at that time they were still out there. The question is are they still there?”

Swimmers and lifeguards may be asking that too. They general consensus is that they were drawn in by the plump and tasty seals. Seal numbers are up over recent decades and gray seals are year round residents of Chatham. The teeth of great white sharks are serrated, designed for ripping blubbery flesh.

“September still has plenty of warm water and optimal conditions for them from the environmental perspective,” Skomal noted. “The shark that was around Naushon Island in 2004 came in late September. We’ve had sightings extend into November.”

In any case the five sharks should provide some fascinating data. The tags contain a microcomputer and will remain on the sharks and the first will pop in mid-January, if all goes well, and then pop off, float to the surface and transmit data. It won’t provide real time information on what the shark is up to, instead it as retrospective on where it’s been.

“Pop up tags have been used in the Pacific and Indian Ocean with fantastic results,” Skomal said. “Think of them as a data logger put on the fish that comes off and transmits data to a satellite. It’s complex because you’re dealing with salt water, mircotechnology, batteries and such. It logs information on depth, temperature and ambient light levels.”

Pacific great whites have been documented swimming from California to Hawaii and diving as deep as 3,000 feet.

Unfortunately GPS doesn’t work because the fish are under water. That makes calculating the sharks’ former locations murky. The light data is critical for that. It will allow scientist to estimate day length and hopefully determine the longitude and latitude. Longer days as winter rolls on will indicate the shark was further south. Sunrise and sunsets can give the longitude.

“That method of geographical location is very problematic if the shark doesn’t go far,” Skomal admitted. “It’s not good on a fine scale.”

But if the sharks travel to South America for instance, it’ll be very informative.

“We don’t have a really good sense of their migration pattern,” Skomal said. “All we have is distribution data based on sightings that are fishery dependent, those caught by fishermen, caught in gear, sighted by chance, and that amounts to 4 to 500 data points a year.”

Now, for the first time, individual sharks can be tracked.

“The tags were attached using an intramuscular dart,” Skomal explained. “It’s important to be precise to do it properly because you don’t want to hurt the fish. We used a harpoon-tagging pole to place the tag with pinpoint precision. It’s worked for us with fish the size of blue fin tuna and basking sharks.”

Skomal is the author of the 278-page “Shark Handbook”, available from the Cider Mill Press in Maine. It presents the science of sharks for the general reader covering many species and general biology.
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Teenager escaped the jaws of Great White shark

An Australian teenager narrowly escaped the jaws of a 4 foot shark, likely a great white, after being knocked off his surf board and thrown high into the air while out in the ocean.

Fourteen-year-old Zac Skyring was out for an early morning surf on the north-east NSW coast with his father when the shark rammed into the underside of his surfboard, catapulting the teenager into the air.

From about 100 feet (30m) away on the beach his father, Nigel, watched in horror as the incident unfolded. When he saw blood pouring from his son's face he feared the worst, but the board had hit Zac's face, causing his lip to split and bleed heavily.

“He was going up the crest of a wave and just as he got to the top a brown thing came through the water and I saw Zac catapulted into the air” Nigel Skyring told The Times.

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“When I saw the blood coming from his mouth I thought - Oh no, this isn't good.”

Zac escaped with only a few light puncture marks on his lower arm and a ripped wetsuit. One of the shark's teeth had gone through his watchband.

"We were very lucky," Mr Skyring said. "We are a family of very strong environmentalists and we know that we were in their [the sharks'] territory."

Experts will examine the teeth marks in the wetsuit to determine the breed of shark involved in the attack.

Shark expert Michael Brown, the director of Surfwatch Australia, said the details of the attack strongly suggested it was a great white shark and not a bronze whaler as first suspected.

"Bronze whalers don't tend to come up and hit you from underneath like that and there's really only one type of shark that does, the great white," Brown told The Times.

"Great whites have a set hunting procedure. They spot you, come to the surface and have a look. Once they've identified you as potential prey they go deep under the water, about 15m - 20m, before coming up and with all their might, hitting you as hard as possible. They then back off, circle and wait for the prey to bleed to death."

He added that great white sharks are golden in colour on top, which can cause people to misake them for a bronze whaler.

Conditions have been ripe for shark attacks in recent years along the NSW coast, Brown said.

"The last four years have been exceptionally good for bait fish to breed and multiply. With so many bait fish, more and more sharks are coming in close to shore to feed.

"I personally believe this year will be worse than last [for shark attacks]."

Shark Week at the the Oregon Coast Aquarium!

Newport, OR - The Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Discovery Channel will celebrate Shark Week August 2 – August 8 with a variety of events highlighting the fascinating world of sharks. Shark Week spotlights sharks as important members of their ocean habitats, unlike the man-eating monsters portrayed in the movies. Sharks live in oceans around the globe—from warm shallows to the cold, deep sea and even fresh water lakes. All of the sharks exhibited at the Oregon Coast Aquarium are species native to Oregon’s coastal waters. Visitors will meet the sharks from Oregon’s coast in the week-long glimpse into the world of sharks.

During Shark Week, the Discovery Channel will offer a week-long series of feature television programs dedicated to facts on sharks. Sharks and their ancestors have presided over the seas for nearly 400 million years, but in the wild today, shark populations are suffering from human activity. Through habitat destruction and overfishing, humans have become more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. Sharks have been depicted as man-eaters and killers for centuries. The reality is that of the more than 350 species, only a handful pose any threat to humans.

Shark Week Schedule of Activities:

Sunday, August 2

10 am – 5 pm – Gleason Room – Shark Stations – Investigate the world of the shark. Feel real shark skin and touch shark teeth. Take home a shark craft.

11 - 11:15 am – Gleason Room - Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

11 am - 2:30 pm – Gleason Room – Face Painting

1 - 1:15 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

Monday, August 3

11 - 11:15 am – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

1 - 1:15 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

Tuesday, August 4

Aquarium Theater - Shark video – all day

11 - 11:15 am – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

1 - 1:15 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

Wednesday, August 5

10 am - 5 pm – Gleason Room – Shark Station – Investigate the world of the shark. Feel real shark skin and touch shark teeth. Take home a shark craft.

2 - 2:45 pm – Entrance Courtyard to Passages of the Deep – Shark

Dissection. See one of nature’s coolest creatures from the inside out. Learn all about the anatomy of the shark during this hands-on dissection.

Thursday, August 6

10 am - 5 pm – Gleason Room – Shark Station. Investigate the world of the shark. Feel real shark skin and touch shark teeth. Take home a shark craft

11 -11:15 am – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

11:30 am - 12:15 pm – Theater – Presentation “Sharks – Myths and Misconceptions”

1 - 1:15 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

Friday, August 7

10 am - 5 pm – Gleason Room – Shark Station – Investigate the world of the shark. Feel real shark skin and touch shark teeth. Take home a shark craft.

2 - 2:45 pm – Entrance Courtyard to Passages of the Deep – Shark Dissection. See one of nature’s coolest creatures from the inside out. Learn all about the anatomy of the shark during this hands-on dissection.

Saturday, August 8

10 am - 5:00 pm – Gleason Room – Shark Station – Investigate the world of the shark. Feel real shark skin and touch shark teeth. Take home a shark craft.

11 am - 2:30 pm – Gleason Room – Face Painting.

11 - 11:15 am – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

11:45 am - Noon – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

1 - 1:15 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

1:45 - 2:00 pm – Gleason Room – Dive Interpretive Presentation Open Sea.

Raffle for gift basket of shark items (winner to be announced at the end of the week)

The Oregon Coast Aquarium is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit educational attraction dedicated to the highest quality aquatic and marine science programs for recreation and education so the public better understands, cherishes, and conserves the world’s natural marine and coastal resources.

Photo Caption: Celebrate Shark Week at the Oregon Coast Aquarium! The view inside Passages of the Deep (Photo by Cindy Hanson, Oregon Coast Aquarium)

To view Oregon Coast Aquarium's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to: http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-9-Oregon_Coast_Aquarium

Tadam! Tadam! Shark Week is baaaccckkk!!!

The Gulf of Mexico is a fine place to find sharks. According to filmmaker Jeff Kurr, the Gulf is teeming with whale sharks, hammerheads, a lot of bull sharks and some “large aggressive makos.”

He cites the Gulf's biodiversity, making it one of his top sites for filming shark footage. “I've had fishermen tell me they've seen great whites,” he says. “You can count on them being everywhere. They circumnavigate the globe. They're everywhere prey exists.”

Kurr's latest film is Shark After Dark, which airs at 8 p.m. Aug. 6. In the great push/pull tradition of the Discovery Channel's Shark Week, it manages to pull an alarm with one hand while gently urging calm with the other. Casual swimmers aren't likely to find themselves in the great white-infested waters around Seal Island off the coast of South Africa, but Kurr's film finds 15-foot sixgill sharks rising from unthinkable depths to feed at night in Puget Sound, just 150 feet from the shore in Seattle.

There've been no reports of a sixgill attack. But footage of the sharks thrashing around hunks of dead fish are a sufficient nudge to avoid the sound at night.

More than two decades old, the Discovery Channel's Shark Week remains required viewing for a dedicated subset of viewer. The week of programming is a titillating cross between nature film and torture porn with a little environmental morality play thrown in.

Kurr points out the disparity in the number of sharks that killed by humans compared to humans killed by sharks. Still the film includes narration that reminds the usually docile sand tiger shark has been charged with 29 confirmed attacks. Cue unsettling music and don't forget to include a crew member saying things like, “The water is churning with teeth and fins.”

Yet Kurr's passion for filmmaking is a reflection of a viewer's passion for what he finds. Despite the sci fi assertion that space is the final frontier, we've a long way toward scratching the surface with the sea.

“It's the last wild frontier left on Earth,” Kurr says. “Just about all terrestrial animals have been fenced off where we can safely see them. But you go into the water at your local beach, and you're in a complete wilderness. In California it's not beyond the realm of possibility to see a great white 100 feet from a beach.”

Despite often being a victim — tens of millions of sharks are killed each year — the shark makes a compelling villain. It's capable of short violent actions only to disappear in a cloud. And it's surrounded by mystery. So, despite few attacks and fewer fatal attacks, the fairly short period of our interaction with sharks has created a chilling sense of terror that has for less than a century fed books and films.

Kurr points out only three instances of multiple attacks in a single area. There was 2001, tagged the Summer of the Shark in Florida, when several people were attacked (it's worth noting that shark attacks worldwide that year were down from the previous year). There was South Africa in late 1957 and early 1958 when five people were killed in a little more than 100 days.

And the one that started it all was off the coast of New Jersey in 1916, when four people were killed. The attacks, including one in a creek, inspired author Peter Benchley to write Jaws. More recently the book Close to Shore was written about that summer when an increasing number of swimmers took to the water to escape then-record heat. This year's Shark Week includes a sort of faux docudrama called Blood in the Water (8 p.m. Aug. 2) that recounts a week of shark attacks.

The 1916 New Jersey attacks are still the source of our cultural shockwaves regarding sharks. Much is still not known. Some theorize that there were multiple sharks, which Kurr believes. Others think it was one, a theory that gets murky because a great whites doesn't seem like a likely predator in a creek 16 miles inland.

The hysteria of the era is best represented by the fact that one report blamed a sea turtle for the attacks. “People knew nothing about sharks and nothing about the ocean,” Kurr says. “And forensics didn't really exist in those times.”

His theory involves weather patterns that drew schools of bait fish into the shallow water. “It's just what you'd call a sharky year,” he says. “It could've just been sharks chasing fish and accidentally attacking people. But the idea that it was the same one cruising along the coast Jaws-style is scientifically, biologically and behaviorally impossible.”

But the story has a narrative sweep and a sense of genuine terror. It's mysterious and chilling and speaks volumes about our fear and fixation with sharks.

Kurr, who made his own film about the 1916 attacks says “the human reaction was the most interesting part of the whole thing”: Panicked people blasting at the water with dynamite and shotguns.

And where some shark obsessives (like me) prefer to keep the fixation to film and the printed page, the more daring sorts like Kurr throw themselves into the water.

The result plays a little into a deeply rooted cultural fear that started in 1916 and was refreshed in 1975 with the release of the feature film Jaws Steven Spielberg's box-office behemoth.

But Kurr's films are informational first and daredevilry second. He's not above tickling the curiosity of shark gawkers, but he's also keen to clear the water and try to replace some myth with fact.

“We keep discovering interesting behaviors,” he says. “And we haven't been studying sharks all that long. There are a lot of great stories out there, lots that we don't know. I think that's why people are fascinated by sharks.”

Shark victims fight to protect sharks from finning!

Nine shark bite victims presented themselves in Capitol Hill in Washington, to lobby for the support of US Congress to protect wildlife sharks, according to CBS.

The nine people urged Congress to review a loophole that a number of fishermen have been exploiting to get around the shark finning ban.

“Most shark species just can’t reproduce fast enough to sustain the type of commercial fishing that’s going on for them,” said Neil Hammerschlag, who researches sharks in the University of Miami.

A third of shark species are threatened with extinction, with about an estimated 100 million sharks killed every year. Most of these deaths are for the harvesting of shark fins, which is an essential ingredient in shark fin soup, an Asian delicacy.

“You would think that we would all hate sharks,” said Debbie Salamone, one of the shark attack victims.

Actress gets up close and personal with ancestor of Great White shark

ACTRESS LANA WOOD and a 70 FOOT SHARK

West Palm Beach, FL, July 14, 2009 — Hollywood actress Lana Wood, who once played Plenty O’Toole opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever, was attacked by what eyewitnesses say was a Megalodon, a 70-foot, 70,000 pound prehistoric cousin of the Great White shark. The attack occurred in the waters off the coast of Monterey, California. . .in the pages of New York Times best-selling author Steve Alten’s new release MEG: Hell’s Aquarium.

Lana Wood, a former Playboy centerfold, has an extensive career in the movies, and wrote a best-selling memoir about her late sister, actress Natalie Wood, back in 1986. She contacted Steve Alten a year ago and asked the author to make her a character in his new MEG book, the fourth and best story in the series.

“My grandson and I love shark stories, and we’re both huge fans of the MEG series. I contacted Steve, and he agreed to write me in as a character. I just finished reading the book – oh my gosh, what a thrill ride, I was exhausted by the time I finished it! Steve is the new Peter Benchley, and MEG is JAWS on steroids. And my character’s scene is so scary. . .but you’ll have to read the book to find out if I survive.”

In his review of Hell’s Aquarium, Steve Donoghue, Managing Editor of Open Letters Monthly states, “Alten writes the whole thing in hyperkinetic present tense, with turns and twists in every scene until it squeaks…there’s a scene late in the book involving a shark autopsy that any thriller-writer would give a tonsil to have thought up! The whole thing fizzes with the kind of fun delirium only the most effective giant killer shark novels dare to attempt.”

Lana Wood will be appearing at Comicon in San Diego July 16th – 19^th as a featured guest in a special area that will house the “Women of James Bond.” George Lazenby, who played 007 in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” will also be appearing. Lana says she will offer free autographs to anyone showing up with a copy of MEG: Hell’s Aquarium.

This year marks Comicon’s 40^th anniversary. Record crowds are expected. Take a look in to Meg_HellsAquarium

Shark novel that should make it on the silver screen

One source of original material Hollywood often turns to is books. Sometimes it’s short stories that are expanded into full length films such as “The Shawshank Redemption.” Most often they are novels. For an example one doesn’t have to look much further than this Wednesday, when “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is released. That is another reason movie studios often turn to the world of publishing; to acquire works that already have a built-in audience.

The trick is for a studio executive to find something that will translate well into the film medium. A novel that appears on the New York Times Best Seller List is a good place for them to start. Not every novel that has been a best seller becomes a movie. Some should not have been turned into films to begin with; “The Bonfire of the Vanities” would be a perfect example. Then there are some that have not been made into a movie, but should have! A great example of this would be the 1997 Steve Alten novel, “Meg”.

“Meg” is about a carcharodon megalodon impeding on modern times. In simpler terms, it is a prehistoric great white shark that once swam the oceans of our planet. This shark grew in length to as much as 70-feet long, and had teeth as big as one’s fist. To see such a magnificent creature brought to life on the big screen is what summer blockbusters are made of. The back cover quote on the novel from the Los Angeles Times said it all: “Two words: Jurassic Shark”.

It’s been ten years since a movie involving sharks has hit the big screen. In fact, “Deep Blue Sea” was originally green-lighted to compete with “Meg” which was thought to be coming out around the same time. Steve Alten believes a “Meg” movie could be even bigger, “Intellectual Makos cannot compete with a story about the greatest, most frightening predator in history.”

“Meg” also brings something else many studios hope to find: a franchise. Currently there are four “Meg” books in release, with the fourth one, “Meg: Hell’s Aquarium” having been released this past spring. A fifth novel in the series is also planned. Can this become a successful franchise? The author addresses this issue as well, “Absolutely. The books get better as they go on. So it’s not like “Jaws”, which was a brilliant book and movie, followed by non-Benchley sequels that got silly.” It’s a little scary to imagine if J.K. Rowling just wrote the first Harry Potter novel which became the beloved film, and then afterwards, someone else came along to make movie sequels.

While “Deep Blue Sea” did modest business, it was an R-rated film. While these movies would involve this giant shark eating humans, they can easily be made into PG-13 films without losing any of the impact of the novel. Just imagine a surfer surfing directly into the mouth of this monster. The original novel included many exciting sequences involving this massive creature, including a climax that features feeding frenzy never before seen at the cinema.

Another plus for this potential film is that it can be looked upon as a “monster movie.” Except in this case, it is about a monster that once existed. Steve Alten, as Peter Benchley did with his novel “Jaws”, wrote the screenplay along with one of the producers, and proclaims that the movie will be even better than the novel. Many believe the film version of “Jaws” was better than the book too. If the film can attract the right director and cast, it’s hard to imagine it failing at the box office.

Apelles Entertainment recently got involved with bringing this great book to a movie theater near you. Hopefully it will all pan out. Mr. Alten tells how gratifying it would be to finally see his first work at a Hollywood premiere, “Not a week has gone by in 13 years where I did not imagine myself walking down a red carpet with my family and friends. Even more so, I want to see the movie made for my loyal readers.” The author has named characters after many of his fans. Something former Bond girl, Lana Wood took part in the latest novel. Some of these fans may see their namesakes on the big screen.

If Steve Alten’s dream comes true for himself and his fans, movie audiences around the world are in for a great ride in the theater.