So I asked leading shark ethologist and behaviourist, Professor Samuel 'doc' Gruber to elaborate. After pointing out how much pain women feel when they give birth, making the point that suffering has no effect on reproduction, he reminded me that sharks evolved their mating behaviours and the physical structures involved, separately from other animals.
Current research has shown that waters off Florida and the Bahamas are important pupping and feeding grounds for several sharks, providing them with the critical habitat required for the conservation of these slow-to-mature ocean animals.
Researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science studied the core home range of 86 bull, great hammerhead and tiger sharks tagged in waters off south Florida and the northern Bahamas.
A New Zealand parliamentary select committee has raised concerns about the potential human risk from shark cage diving around Stewart Island. The Local Government and Environment Committee published a report considering a petition calling for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to immediately and permanently cease shark diving. The petition was created by Stewart Island resident Helen Cave and signed by 768 people.
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, and this is especially hard to achieve with sharks.
Bull shark diving is becoming a popular tourist activity in the waters around Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel.
Luis Lombardo Cifuentes, director of Saving Our Sharks, told the Riviera Maya News they have noticed the sharks displaying fearful behaviour this year and are asking divers to use extreme caution when approaching them by being very quiet and not make noise in the water.
The area is home to about 80 percent of Sabah’s shark population, he said, according to Star Online.
The three parks are Tun Sakaran marine park in Semporna; Tunku Abdul Rahman marine park here; and the proposed Tun Mustapha marine park in Kudat.
The minister said the state had no choice but to use state laws to protect Sabah’s shark population when a request to the Federal government to amend the Fisheries Act to protect marine creature was rejected.
Drs. José I Castro, Keiichi Sato, and Ashby B. Bodine, have discovered a new method of embryonic nourishment in sharks. The tiger shark secretes a nutritive liquid which fills the egg sacs where the embryos are growing, permitting higher numbers of offspring to attain a large size. Their paper, entitled "A novel mode of embryonic nutrition in the tiger shark, (Galeocerdo cuvier)," has just been published in the journal Marine Biology Research.
Abernethy, owner and operator of Scuba Adventures in Florida, had gained the shark's trust through gentle touches, initially to remove five hooks from her mouth. Since 2003, he has been using this method to remove hooks from many different species of sharks, as described in this former article about him, here.
In my article Open Season on US Coastal Sharks, I asked readers to write to each and every member of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission.
While there has been much ado internationally about Australia’s culling practices on large sharks in their coastal waters, there is about to be a similar event to take place in Florida come January 1st, 2016.
Residents of Stewart Island, New Zealand have pleaded for politicians to halt shark cage diving in their waters. The residents and paua divers have expressed fears that the cage diving is attracting great white sharks to the area and putting them at risk, saying they live in fear of a fatal shark attack.
