Dive Dry with Dr. Bill #370: Whale Wars... and the Eating of Flesh

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If one used an endoscopic camera, I wonder how long it would last before the shark bit the cable in two!
 
The camera is housed in a pill that GWS could swallow. Then it'd transfer the pictures wirelessly to the receiver unit. No cables, and the camera pill is cheap enough that it wouldn't need to be recovered.
 
Interesting, Stephan... I live in a world of wires and cables so I wasn't aware of one like that. Maybe I should "swallow the pill" and check myself out!
 
Hey Doctor Bill,

Is anyone doing any research on the Basking Shark, The Pacific Sleeper Shark, or the Megamouth Shark? I know they aren't the most "attractive looking" sharks on the planet, but they do grow to a large size. I never really see anything in the news about them.

Lock Washer
 
basking shark - Google Scholar
pacific sleeper shark - Google Scholar
megamouth shark - Google Scholar

Just a quick search of Google Scholar reveals plenty of recently published research articles regarding all three types of sharks. A lot of scientific news probably doesn't reach the public unless you're actively searching for it or reading the types of journals they're published in.


Oh you are definately right on those links, and how scientific news is not reaching the public. But I think alot of it is just apathy, and shallowness of people today.

For example: you mention sharks...everyone thinks "Great White Shark". Not Basking, Sleeper, or Megamouth. Or when it comes to whales, and dolphins: they think of the "Whale Wars" in the Antarctica, the Japanese dolphin killing and "The Cove" movie, or the recent "Sea World Killer Whale Incident". No one seems to be interested in the last of the Western Pacific Gray Whales (The Korean Gray Whale) down to 100 animals left, or dolphins and porpoises on the verge of extinction like the Hector's Dolphin - down to 111 animals, or The Gulf of California Porpoise (The Vaquita) - down to 150 animals.

Lock Washer
 
I had an exchange yesterday with a friend who wanted to assure me that she was not a vegan (she thought I thought she was). She mentioned that she ate fish, especially shrimp. I explained to her that harvesting natural shrimp was devastating to the environment due to the trawling operations that have tremendous bycatch-to-product ratios. I know, I once worked on a shrimp trawler in the Sea of Cortez (to harvest the bycatch for a major natural history museum).

When I worked on an eco-cruise ship (Lindblad Expeditions), their official policy was not to serve shrimp unless it was proven to be obtained in a sustainable way... so they didn't serve them (except once when the former V.P. was on board with some friends... a bit of a hypocrite if you ask me).

Of course the shrimp she eats may well have been farmed, which raises other environmental concerns.
 
Not entirely hard to believe. Years ago (1972?) I was kayaking in an 18' double in the Sea of Cortez. We had a tiger shark come up and bump the kayak. We estimated it conservatively at 4' longer than the kayak, making it bigger than the then existing record (not sure what it is today). Maybe the really big ones got that way because they were too smart to be fooled by the shark finners.
 

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