Apparently, people being naked does. According to a St. Petersburg Times story a woman had to be rescued from the water and a man came ashore, both au natural, at Fort De Soto.

A statement from the park supervisor about the couple being “lucky, considering the number of bull sharks in the area because of tarpon season,” goes almost completely unnoticed do to the focus of the article on the couple’s nakedness. According to the individuals involved, the woman fell overboard from a boat and the man jumped into save her. They told the authorities they took their clothes off, so that they could swim.

For the record, despite being a shark diving enthusiast, I do not recommend skinny-dipping with bull sharks at night. 🙂

A report on shark diving tours operating in Oahu, Hawaii suggests that the tours do not result in an increase of risk of shark attacks on humans according to an AP article that appeared at MiamiHerald.com. The report is based on a “snap-shot” study over the course of 4 years, which relied primarily on the logbooks of tour operators and reports from boat operators, which I would expect would draw some criticism from those opposed to shark diving (and likely anybody with some knowledge of research design). The article also mentions that federal fisheries are investigating shark tours in Hawaii on the grounds that they are illegally feeding sharks. Based on the results of the study Galapagos sharks and sandbar sharks were the most prevalent sharks encountered by the shark tours involved in the study. The study also concluded that shark tours “do not increase the potential of shark attacks near the shoreline because the boats operate three miles from the coastline and because the chumming they do to attract sharks to cages mimics the decades-old operations of crab fishing vessels in the same area that discard bait from their traps.”
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Last week, a story about 4 shark fishermen being rescued from “shark-infested” waters in New York was featured at various media outlets.

The charter boat that the fishermen were aboard began taking on water, and the men sent out a distress call. Fortunately, two off-duty Marine Bureau officers heard the distress call, responded to the scene, and were able to rescue the fishermen within minutes of their boat sinking.

Fox 5 News in New York ran a segment on this story, in which the threat of shark attacks was strongly emphasized. The segment also features obligatory references to Jaws.

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Fox News (if you’re politically-inclined to avoid Fox News, fear not, these segments are both generally politic-free) ran a couple of fairly responsible news segments focusing the IUCN – International Union for the Conservation of Nature reporting that one-third of all sharks are threatened with extinction.

According to these segments, the deep-water open-ocean sharks are the most threatened (great white, great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, and mako are specifically mentioned in the report). The report identifies over-fishing, inadvertent netting of sharks, and illegal finning as reasons for the decline in shark numbers. Both segments make a point of informing the viewer that without sharks as a top-predator, entire marine ecosystems can die off. Both segments feature Phil Keating reporting from New Smyrna Beach, which seems a bit overplayed, considering that New Smyrna has been dubbed the “Shark Attack Capital of the World.” However, the overall theme of the segments does seem to be headed in the right direction when it comes to informing the audience about the serious threat to shark populations and the effect these losses can have on ocean life, in general.
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Here’s a fine example of an objective report on a recent suspected great white shark attack off the coast of South Africa compared to a less-than-objective “report” from another media source.

What I’ll refer to as the “objective” news story can be found at the Bloomberg.com. In summary, the story reports that Paul Buckley, a surfer, was bitten by what was believed to be a great white shark off of South Africa’s south coast. According to the story, Buckley “grabbed hold of the shark’s tail and it let go of his thigh and swam out to sea.” Buckley then paddled ashore and later received stitches for the bite wound.

For the “sensationalized” story, we need look no further than The Sun with its headline of “Surfer attacked by 3m killer shark.” To The Sun’s credit, their story does offer more details than the Bloomberg.com story, such as the shark being an estimated 3.5m (11.5′), and Buckley receiving 150 stitches to close his wound. However, (as if the headline alone isn’t enough) the story also describes how “brave Paul managed to seize the killer’s tail,” and how he “grabbed the beast’s tail to stop it from killing him.” The word “kill” seems to be a recurring theme in the report.
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The LA Times Blogs ran a story today (07/01/09) about a new great white shark aggregation site. The location of this newly discovered hotspot will be revealed on July 4, 2009. Shark Divers, which appears to be an offshoot of the California-based commercial dive company, Shark Diver has code-named the site Oceania and is offering dive opportunities exclusively to television and film crews beginning in 2010, according to the information accompanying their video posted on YouTube.

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Don’t let the title throw you. While there has been a recent study published in the Journal of Zoology about applying geographic profiling to great white shark hunting behavior, the point of this post is to illustrate how the media sensationalizes headlines whenever sharks (and great white sharks, in particular) are involved in a news story.

I am not a serial killer

Providence, Rhode Island’s ABC-6 News reported on June 23 that a 10-foot Great White Shark was captured in a fishing net and hauled aboard a fishing boat June 3rd off the coast of Narragansett, RI. One of the fishermen on-board the boat spoke with an ABC-6 reporter, choosing to remain anonymous, and informed him that the shark was released back into the water, in accordance with federal law. However, the crew also said that the shark seemed “fatigued” after being hauled in. ABC-6 also reports that there were reports that a great white was found washed ashore within a few days after the shark was captured and released.
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Justin Clarke, a blogger for the Examiner.com, shares his opinion about conservation plans aimed at protecting sharks. I’m not sure if he’s being serious or if this an attempt at humor, but either way it echoes of the Everything-I-Know-About-Sharks-Is-What-I-Learned-From-Jaws mentality. To the author’s defense, he does mention learning about sharks on The Discovery Channel, as well, so maybe he didn’t learn everything from Jaws. Mr. Clarke’s statements include:

“…I think the desirable number of great white sharks is zero.”

and

“Sharks are the ocean’s Nazis, indiscriminate murderers with black eyes and no souls.”
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