Shark footage recorded from ROV onboard Stena DrillMAX at 9100 feet (2770 m) depth offshore Brazil, shot on February 11, 2012, showed a very deep diving shark. According to scientist Jeffrey Gallant of the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Grouep / GEERG, this is probably a southern sleeper shark, but it could also be a Greenland shark or a Pacific sleeper shark. It is however still not known if the distribution of these species extends to the southern hemisphere. These species are virtually impossible to distinguish with images alone. Incidentally, this would be a new depth record for the Greenland shark. The deepest observation to date was 2,200 m (1988), so this could be a new record!

You can watch the shark on Youtube, at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P__-YVYdNmE

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As a CEO of Save Our Seas Foundation, we get some great opportunities. One of those was a visit to Professor Emerita Eugenie Clark, also known as the ‘Shark Lady’.

Genie, as she prefers to be callled, has an impressive career. In 1955, she was is the Founding Executive Director of Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida (formerly Cape Haze Marine Laboratory), where she is now Director Emerita. She was the Principal Investigator of 45 grants, contracts from government and private scientific organizations for the study of the behavior, ecology and taxonomy of fishes. Current research is on behavior of sand fishes, feeding behavior of whale sharks, the effects of human activities on coral reef environments, and behavior of deep sea sharks recorded from 71 deep submersible dives. In 1955, the Mote Marine Lab consisted of one small shed… The complex is now 10,5 acres and has 195 employees and a large aquarium, and is famous for its groundbreaking research and support to countless projects and researchers.

Genie wrote 165 articles in scientific journals and popular magazines.

Times photo: John Pendygraft

Just before her 90th birthday on May 4th this year, this amazing lady will make a month-long…

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Long before humans first appeared on Earth, sharks were swimming the seas. They predate dinosaurs by about 200 million years and were revered by ancient human societies as gods. Sharks come in all shapes and sizes. There are angel sharks, basking sharks, blues sharks, bull sharks, gray sharks, lemon sharks, sleeper sharks, and tiger sharks, among many other varieties. Not only are they found in every ocean of the world, but in many rivers and lakes as well. There will be a major exhihibition about sharks, organized by the Museum of Art in association with Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center. CEOs of Save Our Seas Foundation, Peter Verhoog and Georgina Wiersma, had a very interesting and exciting meeting at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. This exhibition, for which famous shark painter Richard Ellis is the curator, will open on May 12th. It will cover sharks in art over the centuries and will display several famous works of ‘shark’ art.

There will also be an extensive educational and audiovisual component to this event, and after meeting the directors of the museum and Richard Ellis in May last year, Peter and Georgina were invited to discuss SOSF’s involvement. The exhibition…

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Jellyfish blooms have finding their way into the media recently – clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants – creating a perception that the world’s oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overfishing.

A new study conducted at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and published in the latest issue of BioScience questions this view. The study’s authors note that while there have been jellyfish blooms in certain areas (notably Giant Jellyfish in Japan), other regions have seen jellyfish declines or fluctuations. As noted in the press release,

Increased speculation and discrepancies about current and future jellyfish blooms by the media and in climate and science reports formed the motivation for the study. “There are major consequences for getting the answer correct for tourism, fisheries and management decisions as they relate to climate change and changing ocean environments,” says Duarte. “The important aspect about our synthesis is that we will be able to support the current paradigm with hard scientific data rather than speculation.”

The study has also led to the formation of the improbably named JEDI (Jellyfish…

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University of Massachusetts Amherst fish biologists have published one of the first studies of deep-sea fish sounds in more than 50 years, collected from the sea floor about 2,237 feet (682 meters) below the North Atlantic. With recording technology now more affordable, Rodney Rountree, Francis Juanes and colleagues are exploring the idea that many fish make sounds to communicate with each other, especially those that live in the perpetual dark of the deep ocean.

Though little is known at present about the significance of sounds made by deep-sea fishes, Rountree and Juanes say that if, as their pilot study suggests, these tend to be low-amplitude, then man-made noise in the oceans may turn out to be a particular problem for some important species. Noise pollution is a serious problem for cetaceans, which can be disoriented by man-made sounds and end up on beaches, but less is understood about how it affects fish.

Using hydrophones deployed by fishermen during normal fishing operations, Rountree, Juanes and colleagues obtained a 24-hour recording in Welkers Canyon south of Georges Bank that yielded “a wealth of biological sounds” including sounds of fin, humpback and pilot whales, dolphins and examples of at least 12 other…

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This year’s Beneath the Waves Film Festival takes place from March 21-24, 2012 in Norfolk, Virginia, and the organizers have sent word that they are accepting submissions until February 24th:

The organizers of the Festival are currently seeking original films less than 10 minutes in length that highlight ocean/marine/aquatic themes or issues. The festival, while driven by science and research, caters to all levels of experience and backgrounds. Films with a conservation message or that feature scientific research are preferred, but not required.

Now in its third year, the goal of the student-run Festival is to and stimulates science communication while promoting sustainable usage of natural marine resources. You can find out more on the festival’s site and have a look at the submission guidelines here.

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Three new studies looking at ocean acidification have shed light on some of its effects on marine organisms.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, human activities have accelerated the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide mixes with water. The two molecules combine to become carbonic acid, making seawater more acidic. As billions of molecules combine and go through this process, the overall pH of the oceans decreases, causing ocean acidification.

The first study, from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and published Nature Climate Change, documents the the effects of rising CO2 emissions on the nervous systems of coral fishes. Based on several years of observations of how baby coral fishes react to an environment with high levels of dissolved CO2, researchers have found that elevated acidity levels directly interfere with fish neurotransmitter functions, impeding their ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators. Prof. Philip Munday, one of the study’s authors, noted that:

“We’ve now established it isn’t simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption – as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons – but the actual dissolved CO2 itself is damaging the fishes’…

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