So I asked leading shark ethologist and behaviourist, Professor Samuel 'doc' Gruber to elaborate. After pointing out how much pain women feel when they give birth, making the point that suffering has no effect on reproduction, he reminded me that sharks evolved their mating behaviours and the physical structures involved, separately from other animals.
Like a fashion model up on the catwalk, great hammerhead sharks sashay into one’s field of vision, and, if they were human, you would probably say they have just “made an entrance”. Their strange mallet-like head, robust body girth and tall sickle-shaped dorsal fin make them well-nigh instantly recognisable, and most other sharks in the immediate area spot that too and give them a wide berth.
It was not until eight years later, in November, 1984, that another one was found, in a deep-sea net off California. It too, was a male 4.5 metres in length. The third, also male, was a metre longer, and washed up on the shore of Australia, on August 18, 1988. In the following years, megamouth sharks appeared more frequently in a variety of places around the globe.
So shark dive clubs usually bring some fishy scraps—in most cases the remains left over after big fish have been cut up for sale. The scent attracts the sharks into view and provides a bit of excitement as the animals investigate and try to get a piece. But little actual food or nourishment is given. The sharks circle far and wide through the vast volume of the visible ocean, in a memorable and dramatic display, as they look over the scene, zoom in for a closer look, try for a scrap, and socialize.
Current research has shown that waters off Florida and the Bahamas are important pupping and feeding grounds for several sharks, providing them with the critical habitat required for the conservation of these slow-to-mature ocean animals.
Researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science studied the core home range of 86 bull, great hammerhead and tiger sharks tagged in waters off south Florida and the northern Bahamas.
A New Zealand parliamentary select committee has raised concerns about the potential human risk from shark cage diving around Stewart Island. The Local Government and Environment Committee published a report considering a petition calling for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to immediately and permanently cease shark diving. The petition was created by Stewart Island resident Helen Cave and signed by 768 people.
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.
The area is home to about 80 percent of Sabah’s shark population, he said, according to Star Online.
The three parks are Tun Sakaran marine park in Semporna; Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park here; and the proposed Tun Mustapha marine park in Kudat.
The minister said the state had no choice but to use state laws to protect Sabah’s shark population when a request to the Federal government to amend the Fisheries Act to protect marine creature was rejected.
Drs. José I Castro, Keiichi Sato, and Ashby B. Bodine, have discovered a new method of embryonic nourishment in sharks. The tiger shark secretes a nutritive liquid which fills the egg sacs where the embryos are growing, permitting higher numbers of offspring to attain a large size. Their paper, entitled "A novel mode of embryonic nutrition in the tiger shark, (Galeocerdo cuvier)," has just been published in the journal Marine Biology Research.
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.
