A difficulty in obtaining information about the natural behaviour of wild animals is that detailed observations of the activities of different individuals is necessary over long periods of time, and this is especially hard to achieve with sharks.
Bull shark diving is becoming a popular tourist activity in the waters around Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel.
Luis Lombardo Cifuentes, director of Saving Our Sharks, told the Riviera Maya News they have noticed the sharks displaying fearful behaviour this year and are asking divers to use extreme caution when approaching them by being very quiet and not make noise in the water.
Abernethy, owner and operator of Scuba Adventures in Florida, had gained the shark's trust through gentle touches, initially to remove five hooks from her mouth. Since 2003, he has been using this method to remove hooks from many different species of sharks, as described in this former article about him, here.
A new study has revealed butterflyfish are particularly fussy about their food and shelter needs, avoiding corals that have come in contact with seaweed. Conducted by the University of Delaware, the study is the first to critically evaluate how coral-seaweed interactions will impact coral associated reef fishes, a key component of coral reef resilience.
Researching the intelligence of the grey bamboo shark a team of researchers at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, Germany showed that sharks could be trained to recognise and remember shapes for an extended period of time.
First juvenile sharks were subjected to three different cognition experiments, one at a time, and then tested to see how long the sharks could remember their training.
Florida again led the United States in shark attacks last year, with 28 incidents and no fatalities. The vast majority of the Florida incidents were minor ones in which a shark quickly bites an arm or leg in poor visibility water, releasing it as soon as the shark realizes its prey isn't a fish.
"Most of them are better called bites than attacks," said George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File. "They're the equivalent of dog bites."
Potato cod in Queensland are at risk and their placid and curious nature appears to be playing a major part. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) is investigating reports that illegal fishing and fish 'framing' are responsible for declining potato cod numbers at the Cod Hole, a popular dive site off Lizard Island.
University of Miami scientists Dr Neil Hammerschlag and Austin Gallagher, in collaboration with Chris Fallows of Apex Expeditions, South Africa, observed the feeding activity around four dead whales that appeared in the False Bay region during a period of ten years. They concluded that such bountiful sources of energy-rich blubber may be a significant food source for the great sharks.
A case report documenting a fatal South Pacific shark attack suggests sharks may mistake recreational water users for birds. The report, published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, theorizes kite surfers may be at risk for such confusion. The victim, a 15-year-old kite surfing male, died after being attacked by a tiger shark in New Caledonia.
A difficulty in obtaining information about wild animal behaviour is that detailed observations of different individuals is necessary over long periods of time, and this is especially hard to achieve with sharks. But in the shallow lagoons of French Polynesia, such observation was possible without the encumbrance of scuba gear, and without the problem of the shark disappearing into the depths.
