Sea Notes

White Magic

Each day, before the Aquarium opens, our staff are busily prepping food, preparing for programs, and taking care of our exhibits and animals. Early this morning, one by one, many were drawn to the Outer Bay, waiting for a brief glimpse of our special visitor veiled behind the curtain of bubbles. Even though for many of us, this is white shark #4, the mystique, the awe, the power is just as strong as it was four years ago.

In many ways, the care of a young white shark is "routine" for our husbandry staff. And yet we know that each day, we are creating an experience that is unique and special to our many guests, and creating memories that will last a lifetime. Yesterday, I overheard a group of twenty-somethings -- waiting for their first glimpse, declare -- "We will always remember this moment. Twenty years from now, we will remember we were here today, together."

Each guest takes away something different from their visit, but I hope all will leave right now with a little piece of white shark magic, and a desire to share our blue planet with all of these amazing creatures that call it home.

Take Action for the oceans www.oceanaction.org

We did it again!

A little after 5 pm today, a spontaneous round of applause broke out in the Aquarium's Outer Bay wing. Gathered guests and employees witnessed the entrance of a young female white shark into the million gallon exhibit, and despite her diminutive size, she owned it!

This is our second female (our first was in 2004) and our smallest to date, weighing in at a little over 55 pounds. Though if she grows and eats at the same rate as the three who graced the exhibit before her, in less than six months she could have grown at least a foot in length and added 100 pounds!

As we stood captivated, watching her explore her new and temporary waters, the Aquarium's film-maker remarked to me, that prior to the Aquarium's first successful white shark on display, only a few hundred people had ever observed a white shark underwater -- astonishingly perhaps equal to the number that witnessed her arrival today! Over the next few weeks and months, hopefully many, many thousands will see her, appreciate her and learn about the threats facing white sharks and all the other sharks, great and small that grace our ocean planet.

This young girl will teach us how to love a thing we may otherwise fear, and through that love inspire us to find ways to protect her and her kind.

We stand on the brink of losing some of our shark species, including this one. Find ways to help today on our website at www.oceanaction.org and www.seafoodwatch.org

Five Ways to Help Sharks

I came across this great blog yesterday: "Five ways to help sharks". One of the suggestions is to use the Seafood Watch pocket guide to make choices for healthy oceans. Great idea! The shark shown above is a spiny dogfish shark. This little shark often shows up as subsitute for cod in fish and chips. So always remember to ask what is in your breaded fillet and where did it come from?

You can Take Action on our web site on a number of the other suggested action items - including overfishing, plastic bag litter and lost fishing gear - all issues which affect shark populations and their ability to keep up with the demand for their fins, and the impacts of accidental catch in a number of fisheries.

It is estimated that worldwide 100 million sharks die each year in fisheries. It is little wonder that many scientists fear that this could lead to the extinction of a number of shark species.

Please try to find at least one way you can help sharks today!

Voice of the shark

Half way through "Shark Week" and I'm still seeking a good news story. So instead I decided to turn my attention to those who are trying to draw attention to sharks and the issues they face.

I remembered an email we received from Ana Patricia Henriquez, and her illustration "Sharks in jeopardy" that you can see here. Ana learned about the problems sharks are having through a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Later, in a Graphic Communications class at the City College of San Francisco, tasked with depicting an endangered species Ana immediately thought of sharks. She hopes the illustration will draw attention to the issues. It sure would make a great postage stamp! Thanks Ana for sharing this with us.

Next meet one woman shark hero Sonja Fordham. She is the director of the shark conservation program at Ocean Conservancy and policy director at the Shark Alliance. She is a long-time advocate for sharks, seeking an end to overfishing, shark-finning and habitat destruction.

You can read Sonja's blog for shark week and share her passion and tips for becoming a voice for sharks.

Shrinking Sharks?

This week is Discovery Channel's Shark Week - which is often an opportunity for a media frenzy with stories such as, "Killer shark ate my RV". A quick Google news search shows hit after hit of "shark attacks" and new methods to prevent them. All typically human centric.

The truth is, sharks have so much more to fear from us, than we of them. The man-eating sharks problem is resulting in the estimated deaths of 50 million sharks a year to remove the fins necessary to meet the needs of the growing audience craving shark-fin soup. Scientists studying basking sharks now believe they're seeing the consequences of this hunt - smaller sharks.

Ivory poaching resulted in a predictable Darwinian response of smaller elephants with smaller tusks. The genes for larger tusks wiped out of the gene pool with selective hunting of bulls with the largest tusks. Similarly, larger sharks have larger fins, and therefore have a higher value.

It has been shown that populations of animals under pressure breed earlier, and have less robust young. A double hit for fish and shark populations already struggling to meet our demands.

I'm going to look for some positive shark news to report. Let's hope there's some out there in shark week. They need it!

Great Whites at Night

For shark lovers, National Geographic Channel is offering a cool alternative to the Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Friday night (with repeats at other times), it's airing a segment called "Sharkville" on its Wild series. The show highlights new findings that great white sharks are hunting successfully at night -- complete with infrared video footage to document the work.

There's a preview video and photos at the National Geographic Channel site, and also a video clip of the sharks at night as part of an interview with New Zealand shark researcher Ryan Johnson by Bill O'Reilly.

Most interesting is Johnson's conclusion that the sharks are able to prey on seals at night because of the light spilling onto the water from coastal development around Mossel Bay, where he did his work.

Final note: If you want to take part in white shark research projects there, the South African Marine Predator Lab occasionally offers internships.

No internships with the white shark research project at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, or with our colleagues at the Tagging of Pacific Predators. But lots of good information and images.

Good News for Sharks

There's been no shortage of troubling news about sharks in recent years. And when a shark makes headlines, it's usually not in the best light.

So it's great to be able to report two pieces of excellent news this week. First, the House of Representatives passed legislation that further cracks down on shark finning. The bill, H.R. 5741, the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, now goes to the Senate for action.

And in Australia, a team of divers tracked down and rescued an endangered grey nurse shark found with a 9-foot-long fishing gaff stuck in her throat. The 6-foot-long female shark was spotted one day and a rescue team from Sea World Australia organized to remove the gaff.

"This was a difficult and dangerous operation and I congratulate everyone involved for their professionalism and speedy response," said New South Wales government official Ian Macdonald in a story reported in the Daily Telegraph. "She was pale, which you'd expect after such an ordeal, but once released she swam back to the other sharks." (And here's a video clip from CNN.)

With stories like that, and the good work of WildAid as it enlists Olympic athletes in a campaign to end shark finning, this year the phrase "summer of the shark" may take on a whole different meaning.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, our own white shark research project continues this summer. We and our research partners have tagged four juvenile white sharks in southern California waters. We still hope to bring a young white shark to Monterey for a brief stay before as we've done three times in the past four years.

(Credit Grahame Long for both photos, including the great shot of Sea World veterinarian David Blyde reaching through a PVC pipe to remove the gaff from the nurse shark's throat. Copyright 2008 News Limited.)

The State of the Seas

Not a day goes by without a headline or broadcast report about something happening to the health of the ocean. The news isn't always good, but at least more attention is focused on the largest living space on the planet. With awareness, you open the door for solutions. (In the case of the ocean, ignorance definitely isn't bliss.)

With that in mind, the bad news first:

In the Mediterranean, new research estimates that shark populations are down more than 90 percent from historic levels 200 years ago -- with all the negative impacts on overall ecosystem health that result when you all but eliminate the top predators in the system. Hammerheads, mackerel sharks and blue sharks have been wiped out as accidental bycatch, or killed as pests by fishermen who don't value their place in the ocean's living web. And, sadly, there are still few regulations in place to protect sharks in the wild.

There's also disturbing news about the presence of chemical pollutants in the deep ocean. Scientists surveying deep-water cephalopods in the northwest Atlantic Ocean have detected chemical pollutants (like tributyltin and PCBs) in the tissues of deep-sea squids. Tissue samples from deep-sea squids and octopus -- including the cockatoo squid (Galiteuthis spp.) and the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) -- yielded surprising concentrations of persistent organic pollutants. Chemical like tributyltin (TBT, used in anti-fouling paint on boats), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and flame retardants were documented in tissue samples collected by scientists in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

Why worry? Because these cephalopods are an important part of deep-sea food web -- including a source of food for deep-diving whales and dolphins.

On the good-news front, Southern California Edison is spending $40 million to create an artificial reef off the coast of Orange County as mitigation for damage to native kelp forests caused by discharge from its San Onofre nuclear power plant.

The 2.5-mile-long reef, mandated by the state Coastal Commission, is intended to provide footings to anchor giant kelp that will become the basis for a restored kelp forest ecosystem where wildlife can thrive.

Here in Monterey Bay, the return of sea otters from near-extirpation by fur hunters in the 18th and 19th centuries provided conditions for a similar revitalization of the kelp forests. Today, you'd never know that the bay was denuded of kelp by sea urchins, abalone and other grazers after otters were eliminated in the bay. They returned in the early 1960s, and the kelp forest followed them. Keep your eyes on San Clemente to see if the reef there has the same effect.

Finally, a celebration reported this week for "the most important microbe you've never heard of." NPR's Joe Palca took part in commemorating the discovery of a marine bacterium called Prochlorococcus. Why? Because it's super-abundant in the ocean, and is probably responsible for the oxygen in one out of every five breaths you take. Although it's one of the most abundant organisms on Earth, it was utterly unknown to science until 20 years ago.

Sharks: End of the Line?

A new and alarming report estimates that more than half of the world's sharks are at risk of extinction.

Yet another signal that the continued overfishing of these long-lived, late-to-mature animals is threatening their very existence. Six new sharks were added to the official "red list" : Thresher shark, Silky shark, Shortfin mako, the Pelagic thresher, the Bigeye thresher and the Salmon shark (a relative of the already listed white shark).

You can take action on overfishing on our website www.oceanaction.org and check out the WildCoast campaign to end the practice of shark finning.

Friday's Featured Film: The Magic of Sharks

In a week when we mourn the deaths of two men killed by sharks near San Diego and in Mexico, it's a good time to recall that sharks inspire awe as well as fear.

We need to hold and honor that sense of awe, because if we succumb to fear (or greed), the ocean will lose the great predators whose survival is essential to the health of ocean ecosystems.

Sadly, officials in Mexico unleashed a slaughter of sharks following the death of a young American surfer in the waters near Puerto Vallarta. Our friends at WildCoast are leading a campaign to stop the senseless killing, just as the Monterey Bay Aquarium and others are calling for an end to shark finning worldwide.

Filmmaker Howard Hall captures the majesty of sharks in this clip from the PBS Nature program "Shark Mountain." Enjoy!