shark – Roumazeilles.net

Next time I dive, I want to meet this shark

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 11:19:31 +0000

Let’s admit that it won’t be easy to see such a whale shark baby playing (or discovering how to play) with the bubbles produced by scuba divers.

So cute a baby!

Source: Requin-Blanc.

Hand-nourished great white sharks

Yves Roumazeilles — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:25:28 +0000

They don’t seem so ferocious or so voracious those big sharks. I wouldn’t do it, anyway.

YouTube link

Giant aquarium in Japan

Yves Roumazeilles — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:55:21 +0000

An enormous aquarium in Japan (Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium).

YouTube link

Think about it: Some divers dream of meeting a Whale Sharks. Here, you can meet four of them!

Hug a shark today!

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:57:11 +0000

Sharks are amazing killing machines, very efficient predators of the seas. But they are not only that. They also have some behaviors that could be described as interesting, astonishing, amazing, curious or mind-boggling (depending on your state of mind and what you think about the interaction between sharks and divers).

YouTube link

May I parallel this video with a previous post where I was showing the photo of a Japanese diver putting identification marks on a giant jellyfish?

Sharks facing extinction

Yves Roumazeilles — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:54:06 +0000

It is often believed that wide-ranging oceanic sharks are so fast and powerful that they are quite resilient when it comes to fishing pressure. Actually, this is quite the contrary. Most sharks are carnivorous and thus rely on the availability of a lot of animal food, they also tend to mature slowly (so all early catches tend to reduce the possibility of reproduction), they usually have a small number of offsprings.

However, this is not taken into account in fishing practices. Probably under the pressure of Asian countries booming markets and culture-related food habits (like the “shark fin soup”), sharks and rays are fished extensively out of any quotas or limitations. Nevertheless, their populations are depleting quickly. An international study, organised by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG), shows that within the 21 species studied, the extinction rate “is ten to a hundred times greater than historic extinction rates“.

They also make sound proposals for how to manage the situation (like “establishing and enforcing science-based catch limits for sharks and rays” or “ensuring an end to shark finning (removing fins and discarding bodies at sea)“).

Source: IUCN Shark Specialist GrouP.