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- September 20, 2012
- 01:41 AM
- 228 views
Heartbreaking and Heartwarming Tales of Social Sharks
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
One of the cooler trends in marine science has been the revelation that advanced social and learning behavior are pretty widespread among marine animals, and not just the domain of marine mammals. Stereotypically, whales and dolphins are considered the big-brained residents of the ocean, able to outsmart everything else with their adorable group behavior. The truth is more complex and therefore a lot more interesting: several marine taxa from bony fish to cephalopods have proven quite smart, a........ Read more »
Guttridge, T.L., van Dijk, S., Stamhuis, E.J., Krause, J., Gruber, S.H., & Brown, C. (2012) Social learning in juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris. Animal Cognition. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-012-0550-6
McPherson, D.L., Blaiyock, K.V., & Masse, W.V. (2012) Lethal Ramming of Sharks by Large Jacks (Carangidae) in the Palau Islands, Micronesia. Pacific Science, 327-333. info:/10.2984/66.3.6
- June 13, 2012
- 12:08 AM
- 372 views
Declining Predators eat Mediterranean Jellies
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
ResearchBlogging.orgIt wasn’t my intention to keep picking on the Mediterranean, but this paper was just too damn interesting. In the Mediterranean, like many other marine environments worldwide, numbers of jellyfish and ctenophores (those really colorful comb jellies, actually not related to jellyfish) have recently exploded. According to a recent PLoS One paper by researchers from the University of Barcelona (Cardona et al. 2012), a possible explanation may be that their predators are ........ Read more »
Cardona, L., Álvarez de Quevedo, I., Borrell, A., & Aguilar, A. (2012) Massive Consumption of Gelatinous Plankton by Mediterranean Apex Predators. PLoS ONE, 7(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031329
- June 6, 2012
- 10:36 PM
- 547 views
How Italy Ate Up All Its Sharks
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
As dramatically imperfect as U.S. fisheries management can be, I still stand by my stance that we have the best-managed fisheries in the world. Fishermen gripe about it being too restrictive and quick to change, conservationists complain about it being too lenient and slow to adapt, and both have a point. That said, we could do much worse than the job NMFS is doing. This is especially true for shark and ray fisheries, where the old practice of lumping all but a few species into one of two &ld........ Read more »
Dell'Apa, A., Kimmel, D., & Clo, S. (2012) Trends of fish and elasmobranch landings in Italy: associated management implications. ICES Journal of Marine Science. DOI: 10.1093/icesjms/fss067
- March 28, 2012
- 09:10 PM
- 717 views
Great White Sharks Attack Whales. Seriously.
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
During a literature search for some dissertation-related stuff I stumbled upon quite possibly the most awesome paper ever for a shark fan. It’s well-known that sharks, especially large, migratory species, supplement their diet of fish and sea mammals by scavenging on whale carcasses. It’s been theorized that whale carcasses are a very important food source for migrating sharks, but it seems like a relatively unreliable food scource: most large sharks don’t hunt cooperatively ........ Read more »
Taylor, J., Mandelman, J., McLellan, W., Moore, M., Skomal, G., Rotstein, D., & Kraus, S. (2012) Shark predation on North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in the southeastern United States calving ground. Marine Mammal Science. DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-7692.2011.00542.x
- March 25, 2012
- 06:25 PM
- 356 views
The Most Badass Fish in the Sea
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
You might think that the title of this post refers to the spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), the main species of interest for this blog. You’d be wrong. You’d also be wrong to guess the great white, as badass a shark as that is. This post is dedicated to a shark that, despite its relatively average size (by large shark standards), makes its living eating prey that are themselves infamous for being voracious predators. This post is dedicated to the velociraptor of the sea, the sho........ Read more »
Stillwell, C. E., & Kohler, N. E. (1982) Food, Feeding Habits, and Estimates of Daily Ration of the Shortfn Mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) in the Northwest Atlantic. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, 407-414. info:/
- March 19, 2012
- 06:56 PM
- 726 views
Dogfish and Seals Taking a Bite out of Fisheries?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
ResearchBlogging.orgIt should be no secret to readers of this blog or anyone familiar with fisheries at all that spiny dogfish have a pretty rotten reputation among commercial fishermen. Quickly approaching the notoriety of dogfish are those damn dirty sea mammals, the harbor seals. Both animals have enjoyed recent increases in population: dogfish from a period of proactive fishery management, and seals from riding along on the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Arguments against protections for b........ Read more »
RAFFERTY, A., BRAZER, E., & REINA, R. (2012) Depredation by harbor seal and spiny dogfish in a Georges Bank gillnet fishery. Fisheries Management and Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2400.2011.00837.x
- January 27, 2012
- 01:27 AM
- 823 views
The Social Shark Network
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Recently Jason Goldman at the great blog The Thoughtful Animal (if you have any interest in animal behavior at all, you should be following it) put up a post titled “Sharks With Friends.” In that post, he summarizes a recent paper showing that blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus) from schools with the same individuals. Social behavior in sharks is a big interest of mine because my Masters thesis study animal, the mighty spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) is among the most soc........ Read more »
Guttridge, T., Gruber, S., Gledhill, K., Croft, D., Sims, D., & Krause, J. (2009) Social preferences of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris. Animal Behaviour, 78(2), 543-548. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.06.009
Jacoby, D., Busawon, D., & Sims, D. (2010) Sex and social networking: the influence of male presence on social structure of female shark groups. Behavioral Ecology, 21(4), 808-818. DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arq061
Mourier, J., Vercelloni, J., & Planes, S. (2011) Evidence of social communities in a spatially structured network of a free-ranging shark species. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.008
- January 9, 2012
- 12:41 AM
- 873 views
Ageing Spiny Dogfish: Are We Doing it Wrong?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Welcome to the first post in 2012. It’s probably good to start the new year off with a doozy, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, it involves that scrappy little shark everyone loves to hate. Spiny dogfish are possibly the most well-studied shark species, by virtue of being relatively common and easy to handle, but there is always room to learn something new or revisit something we thought we knew (especially with regards to dogfish ecology). One of the best-known features of sp........ Read more »
Bubley, W., Kneebone, J., Sulikowski, J., & Tsang, P. (2011) Reassessment of spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias age and growth using vertebrae and dorsal-fin spines. Journal of Fish Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-8649.2011.03171.x
Nammack, M. F., Musick, J. A., & Colvocoresses, J. A. (1985) Life History of Spiny Dogfish off the Northeastern United States. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 367-376. info:/
- December 17, 2011
- 10:32 PM
- 1,040 views
Who's Eating Atlantic Salmon?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) just can’t catch a break. Like their Pacific counterparts, Atlantic salmon are anadromous, meaning they live in the ocean as adults, but swim upriver to spawn. Despite having the evolutionary advantage of being able to spawn more than once in their lives, Atlantic salmon had the bad luck of requiring rivers in areas with some of the most dense human populations on the planet. Overfishing took its toll, but dam construction and habitat degradation, all resul........ Read more »
FRIEDLAND, K., MANNING, J., LINK, J., GILBERT, J., GILBERT, A., & O’CONNELL, A. (2011) Variation in wind and piscivorous predator fields affecting the survival of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, in the Gulf of Maine. Fisheries Management and Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2400.2011.00814.x
- October 13, 2011
- 12:06 AM
- 710 views
Trawling is Not Plowing
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
This probably should have gone under the annual Southern Fried Science Week of Ocean Pseudoscience, but last week kept me busy enough to effectively prevent me from doing any writing here. For some reason, I’ve been hearing from multiple fishermen, people who have worked with my labmates and are generally pretty smart people, that trawling is “good for the seafloor.” This was covered back in December over at Deep Sea News, regarding a study on mud bottom habitats that aimed t........ Read more »
Freese, L., Auster, P., Heifetz, J., & Wing, B. (1999) Effects of trawling on seafloor habitat and associated invertebrate taxa in the Gulf of Alaska. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 119-126. DOI: 10.3354/meps182119
Hinz, H., Prieto, V., & Kaiser, M. (2009) Trawl disturbance on benthic communities: chronic effects and experimental predictions. Ecological Applications, 19(3), 761-773. DOI: 10.1890/08-0351.1
Hiddink, J.G., Johnson, A.F., Kingham, R., & Hinz, H. (2011) Could our fisheries be more productive? Indirect negative effects of bottom trawl fisheries on fish condition. Journal of Applied Ecology. info:/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2011.02036.x 2011
Loher, T., & Armstrong, D.A. (2000) Effects of habitat complexity and relative larval supply on the establishment of early benthic phase red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus Tilesius, 1815) populations in Auke Bay, Alaska. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 245(1), 83-109. DOI: 10.1016/S0022-0981(99)00157-4
Prena, J., Schwinghamer, P., Rowell, T.W., Gordon, Jr., D.C., Gilkinson, K.D., Vass, W.P., & McKeown, D. (1999) Experimental otter trawling on a sandy bottom ecosystem of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland:analysis of trawl bycatch and effects on epifauna. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 107-124. DOI: 10.3354/meps181107
- September 20, 2011
- 10:16 PM
- 1,137 views
Spiny Dogfish Munch Viruses?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
ResearchBlogging.orgI’ve been on hiatus for a little bit as I adjust to the workload inherent in starting a PhD program (while putting the finishing touches on a thesis, but that’s neither here nor there…), so that’s my excuse for not posting on this story until pretty much everyone else had. In case you hadn’t heard, the compound squalamine, found in sharks (and named for the spiny dogfish) and sea lampreys, is apparently capable of inhibiting and even halting th........ Read more »
M. Zasloff, A.P. Adams, B. Beckerman,, A. Campbell,, Z. Han,, E. Luijten,, I. Meza,, J. Julander,, A. Mishra,, W. Qu,.... (2011) Squalamine as a broad-spectrum systemic antiviral agent with therapeutic potential. PNAS. DOI: 10.1073.1108558108
- August 30, 2011
- 06:15 PM
- 1,401 views
New Dogfish Species Found in Taiwanese Fish Market
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
The Order Squaliformes, home to the dogfish sharks, is one of the most diverse groups of sharks currently swimming the oceans, second only to the Carcharhiniformes in sheer number of species. Within that order is the Family Squalidae, made up of the very familiar spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias (the star of this blog) and a bunch of species that look pretty similar to it. New species tend to pop up in this group, since most of these sharks look pretty similar and the majority of them live in t........ Read more »
White, W.T., & Iglesias, S.P. (2011) Squalus formosus, a new species of spurdog shark (Squaliformes: Squalidae), from the western North Pacific Ocean. Journal of Fish Biology. info:/doi:10.1111/j.1095-8649.2011.03068.x
- August 22, 2011
- 08:45 PM
- 1,466 views
Sharks of the Jersey Shore
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Just got back from a little pre-school-year vacation visiting the Hot Girlfriend up in New Jersey, which has seen its share of shark sightings this summer. New Jersey has a long history with sharks, what with the first high-profile string of shark attacks in U.S. waters occurring there (which would go on to inspire Jaws and, in turn, create the demand for most modern shark research). Unfortunately for those who actually live in New Jersey, the state and the shore region in particular are now ........ Read more »
Hammerschlag, N., Gallagher, A.J., Lazarre, D.M., & Slonim, C. (2011) Range extension of the endangered great hammerhead shark Sphyrna mokarran in the Northwest Atlantic: preliminary data and significance for conservation. Endangered Species Research, 111-116. info:/10.3354/esr00332
Merson, R.R., & Pratt, H.L. (2001) Distribution, movements and growth of young sandbar sharks, Carcharhinus plumbeus, in the nursery grounds of Delaware Bay. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 13-24. info:/
- July 31, 2011
- 12:12 PM
- 1,401 views
101 Uses for Shark Puke Part 2: How Much Do Sharks Eat?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
The last time I wrote about the usefulness of shark puke, I discussed a few of the less obvious uses of diet studies on sharks. As apex predators, sharks can sample a wide variety of potential prey species, and diet studies can provide just as much information on those species as the sharks themselves. That said, the main function and justification for sifting through shark vomit is to figure out what kind of predatory impact the sharks have, which lets us know how these predators fit into the........ Read more »
Bush, A., & Holland, K. (2002) Food limitation in a nursery area: estimates of daily ration in juvenile scalloped hammerheads, Sphyrna lewini (Griffith and Smith, 1834) in Kane’ohe Bay,O’ahu, Hawai’i. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 157-178. info:/
Olson, R., & Mullen, A. (1986) Recent developments for making gastric evacuation and daily ration determinations. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 16(1-3), 183-191. DOI: 10.1007/BF00005170
- June 20, 2011
- 10:41 PM
- 1,419 views
101 Uses of Shark Puke
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Earlier today WhySharksMatter and I had a little light-hearted smack talk about new-school (stable isotopes) vs. old-school (gastric lavage or straight-up dissection) methods of measuring the diet of sharks. These are the things you could be privy to if you were following me on that newfangled Twitter thing (at “press time” I only have 113 followers so there’s still room to get in on the ground floor). This coincided with/provided procrastination during one of my occasional l........ Read more »
Link, J., & Ford, M. (2006) Widespread and persistent increase of Ctenophora in the continental shelf ecosystem off NE USA. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 153-159. DOI: 10.3354/meps320153
Markaida, U., & Sosa-Nishizaki, O. (2010) Food and feeding habits of the blue shark Prionace glauca caught off Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, with a review on its feeding. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 90(05), 977-994. DOI: 10.1017/S0025315409991597
- May 23, 2011
- 09:43 PM
- 1,450 views
Reproduction: Secret Weapon of the Dogfish?
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Spiny dogfish are one of the rare success stories in the management of shark fisheries, with the U.S. Atlantic population representing one of the few shark stocks ever to fully recover from overfishing. At first glance this doesn’t seem to make any sense: spiny dogfish are one of the longest-lived and slowest-growing of the sharks that regularly interact with human beings, and with a 2-year pregnancy it doesn’t seem as though they could replace their numbers in anything less than th........ Read more »
Carrier, J.C., Pratt, H.L., & Castro, J.J. (2004) Reproductive biology of elasmobranchs. Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives, 269-286. info:/
Hanchet, S. (1988) Reproductive biology of Squalus acanthias from the east coast, South Island, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 22(4), 537-549. DOI: 10.1080/00288330.1988.9516324
- April 21, 2011
- 09:44 PM
- 1,477 views
Protected Sharks Still Eat Fish
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
mid the constant talk of lowered biodiversity, invasive species, habitat destruction, global climate change, and any other examples of how thoroughly we as a species have wrecked the planet, it’s always good to hear an actual success story in conservation. Obviously it’s never good news for a species to get to a point where it needs to be protected as an endangered species, but sometimes those protections come into play in time to not only preserve the species, but enable it to rebu........ Read more »
Lucifora, L., García, V., & Escalante, A. (2009) How can the feeding habits of the sand tiger shark influence the success of conservation programs?. Animal Conservation, 12(4), 291-301. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2009.00247.x
- April 13, 2011
- 11:12 PM
- 1,553 views
How to Not Catch Dogfish
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Even the biggest fan of spiny dogfish can’t deny that these little sharks sure are great at choking up entire nets. This is especially problematic for commercial fishermen who are trying to catch anything other than dogfish, and particularly for … Continue reading →... Read more »
David M. Chosid, Michael Pol, Mark Szymanski, Frank Mirarchi, & Andrew Mirarchi. (2011) Development and observations of a spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias reduction device in a raised footrope silver hake Merluccius bilinearis trawl. Fisheries Resarch. info:/10.1016/j.fishres.2011.03.007
- March 21, 2011
- 09:59 PM
- 1,656 views
Unintentional Shark Tagging
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
This might possibly be the most awesome paper about tagging fish ever. One of the handiest advances in telemetry, especially of large, highly-migratory oceanic species, has been the advent of SPOT tags. These tags do it all: movement, depth, temperature, … Continue reading →... Read more »
David W. Kerstetter, Jeffery J. Polovina, & John E. Graves. (2004) Evidence of shark predation and scavenging on fishes equipped with pop-up satellite archival tags. Fishery Bulletin, 750-756. info:/
- February 26, 2011
- 04:23 PM
- 1,043 views
Striped Bass Eat Too Much
by Chuck in Ya Like Dags?
Ah, the majestic striped bass. It’s been called the “perfect fish” by enthusiastic anglers, and represents one of the greatest successes of fisheries management in North America. It fights like a demon when hooked and is delicious when baked. Anglers … Continue reading →... Read more »
Hartman, K. (2003) Population-level consumption by Atlantic coastal striped bass and the influence of population recovery upon prey communities. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 10(5), 281-288. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2400.2003.00365.x
Uphoff, J. (2003) Predator-prey analysis of striped bass and Atlantic menhaden in upper Chesapeake Bay. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 10(5), 313-322. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2400.2003.00366.x
Walter, J., Overton, A., Ferry, K., & Mather, M. (2003) Atlantic coast feeding habits of striped bass: a synthesis supporting a coast-wide understanding of trophic biology. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 10(5), 349-360. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2400.2003.00373.x
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