A case report documenting a fatal South Pacific shark attack suggests sharks may mistake recreational water users for birds. The report, published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, theorizes kite surfers may be at risk for such confusion. The victim, a 15-year-old kite surfing male, died after being attacked by a tiger shark in New Caledonia.
A difficulty in obtaining information about wild animal behaviour is that detailed observations of different individuals is necessary over long periods of time, and this is especially hard to achieve with sharks. But in the shallow lagoons of French Polynesia, such observation was possible without the encumbrance of scuba gear, and without the problem of the shark disappearing into the depths.
Jim Abernethy, owner and operator of Scuba Adventures, was the dive operator who showed all of the others that sharks are peaceful animals who want nothing to do with humans as a food source.
He spends most of his time with wild sharks during dives from his liveaboard ship, The Shear Water, at remote sites in the vicinity of the Bahamas, and is on land for only about 40 days a year.
Discovery Channel's Shark Week has begun again. The week-long shark extravaganza was first shown in 1987, and has become a major feature of Discovery's programming. Since its inception, it has been highly profitable for the network, but at what cost?
On the Ethology of Reef Sharks
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. This is especially hard to achieve with sharks.
Sharks have a very different set of senses than we do, yet the eyesight of the free swimming species is good, so when they look at you, they are seeing you. But you may have the impression that they are using senses other than their eyes most often, and indeed, apart from our shared good eyesight, it is impossible for us to imagine how sharks experience their liquid realm.
In a new study, scientists have revealed the diving behaviour of sharks appears to be influenced by the moon, water temperature and time of day. The study was conducted with grey reef sharks, a species commonly found on coral reefs in northern Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Tagged near Palau, about 40 grey reef sharks consisting mostly of adults of females were followed by scientists from UWA and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who recorded their movement and diving patterns over a two-year period.
The reasons for shark attacks and the question of when and where they might occur has always been the subject of intense scientific interest in the effort to make seaside recreation as safe as possible.
New research conducted by Swedish researchers finds that anxiolytic drugs in surface waters alter animal behaviours that are known to have ecological and evolutionary consequences
Researchers from Umeå University in Sweden examined how perch behaved when exposed to oxazepam, a drug commonly used to treat anxiety disorders in humans.
The scientists exposed the fish to concentrations of the drug similar to those found in the waters near densely populated areas in Sweden.
Anyone who has faced an agitated shark has felt the power of communication through body language. The response is so immediate and so physical, that emotion, expressing through body language, is revealed as an important medium of pre-vocal communication among animals.
