 By calling manta rays a vulnerable species, scientists hope to stop or at least track the market in its gills. Used in Chinese medicine, the ray population is down 30% in 10 years. Keep reading Manta rays get some protection from fishermen hunting their gills  Suffolk County closed Long Island beaches because basking sharks were sighted. They’re big tourist draws in the UK–like manatees but with a scary name. Keep reading Did Hamptons beaches close for basking sharks’ scary name?  Japan isn’t releasing enough information on radioactive compounds and levels to know if sea life is safe. Past nuclear dumps have lead to mass die-offs. Keep reading Yale report: not enough data to believe Japan’s radioactive water dump is safe  BLM kills the idea of the NV Pickens sanctuary late on Friday without much explanation. Long Island may no longer be the last place in US without coyotes; one spotted in Queens. Wales hopes fin whale sightings mean whale watching. Georgia hunter gets away with online remote shotguns to kill feral hogs. Keep reading BLM dumps Pickens’ horse sanctuary; Coyote breaches Long Island; Wales gets Whales  Santa Monica Aquarium showcases local fish, but it’s not boring. They have a freaky exhibit of live shark embryos in egg casings. Bonus: eel, starfish & urchin Keep reading Freakiest Shark Exhibit Ever At Santa Monica Aquarium  Yesterday we reported on how the Great White Sharks that are closing beaches on Cape Cod are also drawing shark tourists. Today another seal boat captain tells us they’re looking in the wrong spot. Captain Keith Lincoln of Monomoy Island Ferry says that people are mistakenly hanging around Chatham Lighthouse since that’s where the shark was first sighted by kayakers a eating a seal in August. “That is all due to the misleading information given by the media,” says Captain Keith. “Massachusetts Department of Fisheries page shows all the taggings being done three miles south of the lighthouse near the area where South Beach and South Monomoy Island attached in 2006.” Looking at the Fisheries map here, he’s totally right. Excellent tip, Captain Keith. (Though they do also show pictures of sharks offshore of the lighthouse.) He also warns that even if you’re in the right place, the odds of seeing a shark are pretty impossible. The tagging teams use spotters on planes and perches 35 feet out of the water.Captain Keith reports he’s “calls about seeing the sharks, which is nearly impossible to guarantee.” I think the seal tourists of Cape Cod have gotten spoiled; the tour boats can guarantee sightings because they’re dealing with the east coast’s biggest colony of gray seals, which is somewhere around 10,000. Normally wildlife watching is no sure thing. Captain Keith, a 20-year veteran of the seal tours, says the sharks (and attendant media frenzy) come every year. “I think this year Keep reading Cape Cod Shark Update: Look Further Up the Coast, Captain Says  When news got out that Chatham, MA’s, gray seal colony–the biggest on the east coast–was drawing sharks that closed beaches, a funny thing happened. Or didn’t happen. Instead of running away scared, more tourists came to this little town on Cape Cod’s elbow to see some sharks, hoping for a picture, or at least a glimpse. “It’s a big draw,” says Lisa Franz, executive director of the Chatham Chamber of Commerce. “We have traffic jams… People are still walking in today and saying ‘Where can we see them?’” Tony LaCasse, a former veteran Boston TV newsman, says years ago local TV news would’ve been filled with scared would-be swimmers. But that was before years of education that drilled home how very unlikely it is to be bitten, let alone eaten, by a great white shark in New England. (Last fatal attack: 1936) Now we get shark tourists. “It’s a long way from Jaws,” says LaCasse, where the premise was they couldn’t possibly close the beach on the Fourth of July. The sharks are coming because the water is (briefly) warm and because the seal population has grown unchecked–well, that is, until the sharks showed up. Seal populations were kept artificially low for decades–maybe centuries. Until the 1960s, Massachusetts even paid a bounty for each seal (“a nickel a nose” in the early 1900s). Now seals are making a comeback. Cape has the biggest population on the American east coast, with roughly 10,000 (no one’s done a formal count since Keep reading Sharks (& The East Coast’s Biggest Seal Colony) Draw Tourists  We’ve just had a couple big foot chefs–Alice Waters and Scott Boswell– shun shark fin soup, but a quick check around shows it’s still common in most American cities. Shame works when a celebrity chef gets linked with shark finning, the hideous way fins are hacked off a live shark, which is then thrown back to die, decimating shark populations worldwide. But what about the 56 restaurants in New York City that still serve shark fin? Or San Francisco’s 69 shark fin restaurants? A search on New York Magazine‘s Menu Pages reveals how easy it is to find shark fin soup around the country. New York City has 56 restaurants serving shark fin. 35 restaurants serve shark fin soup. Three are vegetarian–meaning it’s mock shark fin soup. Not surprisingly, the biggest hunk–20–are in Chinatown.But they’re all over the city, not just in restaurants only frequented by Chinese diners. Shanghai, near Macy’s, serves five versions ranging from $33-$41. The Upper East Side’s Our Place has a bowl for $12. A place near China Town sells it by the quart for take-out. >In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, East Harbor Seafood Palace features a whole shark-fin soup category on its menu, with options from $55-$75. San Francisco: 69 restaurants serving shark fin, 4 vegetarian Los Angeles: 31 shark fin-serving restaurants. (The swanky Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills has imitation shark. Pacific Coast Highway Chinese Restaurant has a whole menu division of the real thing.) Philadelphia: 11 shark fin purveyors, 4 vegetarian Boston: 9 Keep reading Top Chefs Shun Shark Fin Soup, But You Can Still Get it Anyway  Photo of a shark on a South African tour courtesy of David Salvatori on Flickr.Are sharks suddenly evolving into man-eaters?!60 Minutes worries they are. Last night they updated a story on shark tourism, which they blame for sharks “becoming more dangerous.” Their proof? When they did the story in 2005, there had been six attacks off South Africa in the previous two years, three fatal. Before that Bob Simon declares shark attacks “virtually unheard of here.” Really? Look, I know the game. Reporters always have to justify a story with a news peg. But shark attacks deaths aren’t one of those nebulous trends like people wearing straw hats; we know exactly how many shark attacks and deaths there are because the Global Shark Attack File keeps track. The file doesn’t show any big increase in South Africa or the world. The file shows that there was about one fatal shark attack per year in South Africa since the early 1980s. Since 60 Minutes reported on this supposed surge in shark attacks in 2005? There have been three confirmed deaths off South Africa (and two deaths where sharks might have been involved). In other words, shark deaths have been following the same pattern for three decades: about one death a year off South Africa. And worldwide it’s about five a year. You know what would’ve been a smart update? How about the study out just last month that tours off Hawaii aren’t really effecting shark behavior? To see more animals Keep reading 60 Minutes Shoddy Shark Attack Research  SHARK WEEK, which had 29 million viewers last year, is becoming some kind of international holiday. It’s not just the Discovery Channel celebrating across the board with MythBusters‘ shark experiments and a reliving of Mike Rowe’s shark Dirty Jobs. But now everyone’s jumping on the SHARK WEEK bandwagon. Even the other networks. Sharks EverywhereAre You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? (FOX) features a shark attack victim. Smithsonian Channel has a show on therapy for shark attack victims. The Early Show (CBS) is featuring a shark. My local PBS station had a show on a guy “with an unusual relationship with a shark.” Showtime has a shark movie. Win a Dream Date with a Shark Researcher! The Shark Research Institute is auctioning off lunches with shark researchers around the globe, starting at $25–plus you pick up the tab for lunch. Chris “Air Jaws” Fallows is the hottie so far, but that’s probably because he’s throwing in a shark tour. Dueling Petitions.Think Shark Week is too sensational and bloody? Sign this petition of concerned scientists, surfers and other shark lovers.Want more gore 24/7? Then this petition is for you.Want Spain to stop finning sharks? Sign here. European Shark WeekJust as you would expect from Europe, their Shark Week (Oct. 10-18, 2009) is short on melodrama and long on serious conservation. The Shark Alliance is asking Spain to stop chopping fins off live sharks and throwing the fish back to the ocean to bleed to death. To see more animals go to Keep reading SHARK WEEK: Not Just for the Discovery Channel Anymore |
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