Divers: What do you see?

[Sharkgirl]

Divers/Snorkelers: I am trying to prove that YOU are the new fishermen for providing important information about what is going on the ocean. Whether you keep a log book or not, I need you to fill out a survey that will tell us where you DO / DON'T see sharks (any kind) . I am a PhD student, and I am going to use this data to figure out where the sharks are and where they have disappeared from & why. I will also show, for the first time, that divers observations ARE useful.

The survey takes only about 1 minute for each area and/or decade that you have been diving- start with your most heavily dived areas (more than 20 dives). Please, go to the "Diver Survey" section of the website http://www.globalshark.ca/ for more information and to fill out the online survey. THANK YOU.
Please feel free to make any comments or suggestions.
Christine



Yay, thank you so much for offering to fill out my survey. I have heard about the blue shark status from a number of people, but all second hand so I haven't been able to get any standardized data on it yet. I look forward to seeing your surveys come in.

Cold, but sooo beautiful and clear.

 

[drbill]

I'm on my way to the post office, and will fill out the survey later.

When I first started diving here in SoCal (Catalina Island) well before you were born, blue sharks were a very common sighting nearshore. We used to count them on our 2 1/2 mile boat trip between the school I taught at and the town of Avalon. Last time I remember being able to do that was in the late 70's or early 80's. Now we have to chum all day to attract a few in miles off shore. Very sad. At least the soupfin sharks are starting to make an apparent comeback... and the great whites are increasing from what I hear.

 

[CBulla]

This is funny, but in the 150ish dives I have logged (and who knows how many before certed and 'logging'), I can count on my hands how many sharks I've seen. Actually thats sad.

 

[DavidPT40]

I've never seen a shark while diving.

 

[Walter]

The survey takes only about 1 minute for each area and/or decade that you have been diving

You must not dive much. It takes me hours. Going through several volumes of log books is not something done in 1 minute. Add to that the fact you have to separate out various areas, count out numbers of dives in each area, numbers of sites in each area. This is a big project. Good thing I'm only dealing with 3 decades.

 

[RoyN]

Whats a shark?

 

[Sharkgirl]

Walter, I totally understand how long it takes to go through dive logs. Thats why it is designed to be from memory.

If you have logged your dives with your sightings, you are a special case- Fantastic. People like you allow me to get an estimate of memory error. It would be great if everyone that had a log book with sightings recorded, filled out the survey from memory and then filled it out from their log books (or sent me copies of logbooks in most cases and I do all the dirty work)- of course, I pay all expenses for copies and shipping.

 

[Sharkgirl]

CBulla, I'm mostly in the same boat with shark sightings- with 500 dives logged. For me, most of my diving has been in the Caribbean. Once you get to more remote areas like NW Hawaii, Line Islands, even Fiji and Australia, you'll probably start needing new hands for counting. The good thing about Caribbean divers, is that it should be very easy to fill out the survey- especially for the last 2 decades- 0 and 0 (except perhaps North Bahamas and Belize)- but we'll see what the surveys say.

 

[Sharkgirl]

DavidPT40- The survey will just be easier for you if you haven't seen any sharks- 0 and 0. The 0's are just as important as presences. Maybe someone will fill out a survey for the same area as you, but in the 1970's they saw lots. That's why I need lots of people to fill in this puzzle of space and time. Every little bit counts.

 

[HowardE]

I thought the survey was a little odd.

I filled it out; but it seems like you're not collecting a lot of data in a concise manner. (no offense)

I would say that I see at least 1 shark (most commonly a nurse shark) on every 1 out of 5 dives. I've only seen 1 hammerhead in the water, and only a few bulls.