Australia’s Sunrise 7 recently interviewed pro surfer Bethany Hamilton. In 2003, Hamilton lost her arm as the result of a tiger shark attack off of Hawaii.
Topics discussed in the interview include Hamilton’s recovery and her return to surfing. Additionally, Hamilton discusses the upcoming movie “Soul Surfer” which is based on Hamilton’s book “Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family and Fighting to Get Back on the Board.”
Spot.us posted an article today about a group of shark fishermen, led by Steve Shirley, who have turned their efforts from killing sharks to promoting catch and release tagging efforts. Team Fish Finders have joined up with researchers and filmmakers in effort to collect data on catch rates and travel ranges of tagged sharks.
A documentary about Shirley’s transformation from shark hunter to shark conservationist was shot by filmmaker David McGuire. According to Spot.us, the documentary, titled “Shark Hunter,” will be screened at aquarium and film events, in addition to being distributed online to reach a wide audience.
I think I can safely say that this is the first “commercial” I’ve ever seen for fossilized Megalodon teeth. Teeth of Megalodon (Dente de Megalodon) looks to be an online store dedicated specifically to the sale of Megalodon teeth found off of Belep, New Caledonia. While the site does seem to have a fairly wide selection of the fossilized teeth, the condition of most of them appears to be more on the “worse for the wear” side of things.
Australia’s Sky News is reporting that approximately 1,000 cardboard shark fins were assembled on Rio’s Copacabana beach as a form of protest against shark finning. Taiwan News also reported that, in addition to the fake shark fins, shark sculptures and a banner reading “Japan/China/Taiwan stop killing our sharks” were included in the demonstration. The article added that the demonstration was a kick-off for Brazil’s shark preservation week.
According to YouTube user CalSmack the nurse shark seen in the video had been hooked on a fishing line, which still had a weight attached to it. The line had become entangled in the surrounding coral preventing the shark from moving. Having nothing to cut the line with but his room key, the snorkeler seen in the video managed to sever line “as close to the shark’s mouth” as he could allowing the nurse shark to swim away freely. Kudos to the snorkeler for his efforts!
"I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque."
A recent LiveScience article suggests that the Mediterranean population of great white sharks may have come into existence as the result of some wayward pregnant white sharks who got lost approximately 450,000 years ago.
Genetic analysis of four Mediterranean white sharks revealed that they are more closely related to white sharks of the Pacific and Indian oceans when compared to white sharks from the Atlantic.
According to the article, extreme climate change could have resulted in abnormal currents which caused the sharks to alter their normal migratory paths while traveling along the east coast of Africa. The theory suggested that currents pushed the female sharks around the tip of Africa and into the Atlantic Ocean where they swam eastward toward birthing grounds and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into Mediterranean waters.
The article goes on to say that the female sharks tend to stay close to their breeding grounds while male white sharks are more likely to travel across ocean basins, which could explain why the sharks remained in the area.
For more information on this story check out the full article at LiveScience.com.