Close-Up Shark Pictures

Kotteke.org: Close-up shark portraits

I’m not sure how underwater photographer Todd Bretl manages to take such close-up snaps of sharks — diving cage? underwater telephoto? some sort of robotic camera? — but the results are pretty great. I think I’ve seen these exact facial expressions on characters’ faces in The Sopranos and The Godfather.

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CSN Editor: The link to the shark photo-gallery is here .... Todd Bretl.

Clever Shark

Watch A Clever Shark Suck Heaps Of Fish Right Out Of A Fisherman’s Net -- io9

Why go to all the trouble of chasing down schools of tasty fish when fishermen have conveniently gathered them up inside one location? This bold shark decides to help itself to a a stolen snack, sucked right out of a fisherman's net.

Mark Erdmann of Conservation International discovered that whale sharks in Indonesia's Cendrawasih Bay have taken to swimming about the fishermen's lift nets and have figured out how to suck the silverside baitfish right out of the holes. The fishermen don't typically kill the sharks, deeming them to be good luck, but they are looking to design new nets that the sharks can't use as an all-you-can-eat buffet. [via Neatorama]

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Look Who Is Coming To Dinner

WHDH-TV -

Great White Shark Stalks Cape Cod Kayaker -- 7News

ORLEANS, Mass. (WHDH) -- Nauset beach was evacuated Saturday afternoon when a 12 to 14-foot shark was spotted only 100 feet out.

A great white's dorsal fin cut through the top of the water as it cruised the shoreline.

“All of a sudden, we saw this person in a kayak, and we saw a fin 10 feet from it,” said Lizzy Jenkins.

Everyone else in the water immediately ran onto the beach.

“We started swimming and people on the shore started waiving us in,” said Christina Proulx.

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My Comment: The above picture is a classic.

Two Well Known Species Of Sharks Could Be Endangered

Hammerheads are aggressive hunters, feeding on smaller fish, octopuses, squid, and crustaceans. They do not actively seek out human prey, but are very defensive and will attack when provoked. Photograph by Brian J. Skerry

A Case Of Misidentification: Two Sharks Could Be Endangered -- Red Orbit

Confusion of identity between two shark species may threaten the survival of both. A new and unnamed shark species originally discovered off the Eastern United States seaboard discovered by Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center (NSU-OC) has a cousin that shares a striking resemblance: The endangered scalloped hammerhead shark.

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My Comment: I guess if present trends continue .... shark fin soup will be a thing of the past.

Shark Feeding Frenzy Off Australian Coast (Video)

Shark Feeding Frenzy Off Australian Coast – Video -- The Guardian

A school of sharks feed on a school of tuna that in turn are feeding on a school of smaller fish a few hundred metres off the coast north of Perth. About 50 sharks were spotted by the crew of an air sea rescue helicopter. Some of the sharks were estimated to be 2.5 metres long

Great White Sharks Hunting Cape Fur Sseals Off The Coast Of Cape Town, South Africa

A seal tries to outmanoeuvre a great white shark, seconds before it becomes lunch. The tiny Cape fur seal is dwarfed by the enormous shark as it hunts off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. These images taken by wildlife photographer David Jenkins show the constant struggle for survival for the animals that live on Seal Island in False Bay where around 12,000 seal pups are born each November and December. Taken over three years, the photos illustrate exactly why great whites are considered one of the world's most efficient predators. Picture: Specialist Stock / Barcroft Media

CSN Editor: A cool gallery of pictures. The link is here.

Shark Nations Failing On Conservation Pledges

Governments are supposed to "encourage full utilisation of dead sharks" - but fins are targeted.

From The BBC:

Many countries whose fishing fleets catch large numbers of sharks have failed to meet a 10-year-old pledge on conserving the species, a report says.

The wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and the Pew Environment Group say most of the main shark fishing nations do not manage fisheries well.

Ten years ago, governments agreed a global plan to conserve sharks.

An estimated 100 million sharks are killed each year, with nearly a third of species at risk of extinction.

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My Comment: Shark fin soup is a delicacy that many people love to order (myself included). Until this changes .... and rising prices probably will change people's desire for this delicacy .... sharks will always be threatened with extinction.

Sharks Photographed Eating A Whale

Great white shark feeding on a dead Bryde's Whale off Seal Island, Cape, South Africa Photo: ALISON KOCK / SPECIALIST STOCK / BARCROFT MEDIA

From The Telegraph:

Incredible pictures have caught the moment that several Great White Sharks ate a dead whale.

The Great White was seen feeding on a dead Bryde's Whale on September 11, 2010 in Seal Island, Cape, South Africa.

Almost 30 sharks took the opportunity to have lunch when they spotted the whale, giving animal lovers and wildlife experts an extraordinary insight into their feeding behaviours.

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Sailor's Body found Inside Shark At Jaws Beach

The beach near where Mr Newton was last seen is located on the small island where the 1987 Jaws film was partially filmed Photo: ALAMY

From The Telegraph:

The body of a sailor who disappeared off Jaws Beach – on an island where one of the "Jaws" movies was filmed – has been found inside the stomach of a shark.

Police in the Bahamas used fingerprints to identify Judson Newton, although they are still waiting for DNA test results.

It is unclear if the 43-year-old Mr Newton was alive when he was eaten.

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Human Body Parts Found in Tiger Shark's Stomach

From Discovery News:

The legs, arms and severed torso of a person were all found inside the stomach of a tiger shark caught by sport fishermen last weekend, according to The Press Association, The Boston Herald, and numerous other reports.

Tiger sharks can swim over long distances, so it is not yet clear where the 12-foot-long shark consumed its human victim. Police are currently conducting DNA tests on the person's remains, Assistant Police Commissioner Glenn Miller in Nassau, Bahamas, told AP.

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The Shark Soup Massacre And How To Stop It

From New Scientist:

Sharks attacking humans is big news; humans attacking sharks, not so much. Conservation photographers Paul Hilton and Alex Hofford are trying to redress this imbalance. In revealing the extent of the bloody trade in shark fins, their book Man and Shark is a testament of our cruelty towards these majestic creatures.

Hilton and Hofford, who both live in Hong Kong, have witnessed the butchery of sharks in places as diverse as Mozambique, Yemen and Sri Lanka. But Hofford had seen nothing until he went to Japan.

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Prehistoric Shark Attack Reconstructed

The skeleton of a dolphin, preserved for 4 million years, shows bite marks across its ribs from the shark attack that killed it. Credit: Giovanni Bianucci

From Live Science:

A shark attack that took place 4 million years ago has just been reconstructed from the extinct hunter's fossilized victim – a dolphin.

Scientists investigated a well-preserved 9-foot-long dolphin (2.7 meters) discovered in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. From the remains, the researchers not only finger-pointed the attacker but also how the thrashing went down, suggesting the shark took advantage of the dolphin's blind spot.

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Great White Sharks Now More Endangered Than Tigers ith Just 3,500 Left In The Oceas

Great White Sharks were made infamous by the film Jaws,
but they rarely attack people and usually do by accident.

From The Daily Mail:

They are known as one of the deadliest creatures on Earth.

But according to a shocking new study, great white sharks are also one of the most endangered.

Wildlife experts say there are now fewer than 3,500 great whites left in the oceans, making them rarer than tigers.

Yesterday, marine biologists called for an end to mankind's long battle with sharks and demanded urgent action to prevent them going extinct.

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Shark Fins Traced To Home Waters Using DNA -- A First

Workers remove the fin from a female mako shark on a beach in Santa Rosalia, Mexico, in an undated picture. For the first time, scientists have used DNA analysis to trace shark fins back to their home waters. Most of the hammerhead fins found at the market came from endangered populations in the western Atlantic, the researchers said in December 2009. Photograph by Brian J. Skerry, NGS

From National Geographic:

Many of the hammerhead sharks that are butchered to feed Asian demand for shark-fin soup start their lives in American waters, a new forensic study shows.

For the first time, scientists have used DNA from shark fins to determine where they came from. The researchers traced finds from the scalloped hammerhead shark species—collected at the world's biggest fin market in Hong Kong—back to rare populations in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans.

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Sight Tests Reveal Advantage Of Hammerheads' Extraordinary Heads

A scalloped hammerhead shark, one of the species given sight tests.
Photograph: Stephen Frink/Corbis

From The Guardian:

The wing-like heads of hammerhead sharks with their widely spaced eyes give the creatures excellent binocular vision.

The bizarre appearance of hammerhead sharks has led generations of marine biologists to ponder the same question: why the wide face?

Part of the answer may now be at hand. Eye tests on species caught off the coasts of Florida and Hawaii show that the wider the head the better the shark's binocular vision, and hence its perception of distance.

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Great White Sharks 'Hang Out' Together

Researchers have found that great white sharks return to the same areas to hold annual meetings
Photo: BARCROFT

From The Telegraph:

Great white sharks, previously thought to be solitary hunters scouring the seas for prey, may also have a sociable side.

Researchers have found that the fearsome predators return to the same areas to hold annual meetings, congregating to forage or mate together in their hundreds if not thousands.

One "hotspot", between Hawaii and Mexico, is so popular that the scientists have named it the "white shark cafe".

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Great White Sharks At Times Enter San Francisco Bay

A large white shark approaches the tagging boat. The shark's head is visible right behind the boat, with the iconic dorsal fin behind that and the tip of the tail marking its full length. (Courtesy Stanford University/Susie Anderson)

From Mercury News:

Windsurfers, fishing boats and cargo ships aren't the only traffic in San Francisco Bay. Great white sharks are there sometimes too.

In what is believed to be the first scientific confirmation of white sharks in San Francisco Bay, researchers from Stanford University, the University of California-Davis and other organizations put satellite and acoustic tags on 179 white sharks in Northern California waters between 2000 and 2008. They found that most of the sharks migrated thousands of miles every year, from California to as far away as Hawaii, and five swam underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007 and 2008 and into bay waters.

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France-Size Shark Sanctuary Created -- A First

The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau (above, a gray reef shark in Palau), the country's president announced on September 25, 2009. Photograph by Tim Laman/NGS

From National Geographic:

The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau, the country's president said today.

Johnson Toriboing announced the creation of a shark haven without commercial fishing during an address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

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Swimming With Sharks

Watch CBS Videos Online

Great White Sharks Hunt Just Like Hannibal Lecter

In this undated photo released by The University of Miami, a white shark is seen successfully lunging for and capturing a juvenile fur seal at the surface in False Bay, South Africa in 2004. (AP Photo/University of Miami, Neil Hammerschlag)

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight.

The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that's been hard to observe beneath the surface.

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