Mapping Human-Shark Encounters

Teaniel Mifsud is a master student (at the University of Wollongong, Australia) who is about to embark on an interesting research project mapping human-shark interactions. Teaniel stopped by Fish Thinkers to share details of the project and how you can assist:

Sharks attract a great deal of interest from the public and the media. We saw this recently when a whale carcass washed up on Bulli Beach in September 2020. Several sharks were drawn to the carcass over a number of days, seeking food. Their presence, along with the whale carcass, brought hundreds of people to the beach and into boats to watch, photograph and video the scene. Numerous articles and videos of this and other events demonstrate intense fascination with sharks. Despite this clear interest, very little is known about encounters between people and sharks outside interactions considered negative; that is, shark bites that lead to injury or death.

Researchers at the University of Wollongong are investigating the full spectrum of human interactions with sharks in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions of New South Wales; those deemed positive, negative and mixed. Understanding the perspectives of this group will add to our understanding of human-shark relations and help inform shark-related policies in New South Wales (NSW). The project aims to understand:

• the nature of human-shark encounters and their effects on ocean-users, people who use the ocean for work fitness or recreationally, on the South Coast of NSW; and
• if and how human-shark encounter influences a person’s relationship with and use of the ocean and particular places.

Part of this project involves ocean-users recording their experiences and encounters with sharks on an interactive map. This map will allow researchers to understand where people have encountered sharks, what they were doing at the time of the encounter and how they felt about the encounter. If you would like to record your own experiences, please follow this link.

by Teaniel Mifsud. Photograph of Grey Nurse Shark by Aristo Risi http://aristorisi.com/

Citizen science: how people power is changing science…

Recently I sat down with Adam Woods (Australian museum science communicator) and journalist Clare Watson to talk about citizen science and its increasing popularity. You can read the resulting article in The Stand and hear about some of the citizen science we have been lucky enough to be involved in—ranging from recreational fishers fishing deep water and sending in records of  rarely seen fish, to keen backyard naturalists who are logging sightings of frogs and koalas in the suburbs. You can find the full free to access article here!

Fish Thinkers online: 2018 in review

Fish Thinkers nine most popular Instagram posts of 2018

At the end of each year we take a quick look back at our blog and social media stats, to see what people were particularly interested in (e.g. see 2017 in review). Here is the 2018 roundup:

ASFB Student Competition in Science Communication awards 2018

Voting is currently open in the Australian Society for Fish Biology Student Competition in Science Communication awards 2018 (five days left to vote!).  This year there is $3000 in prize money up for grabs. Entry is via a short video showcasing the postgrads research and the public vote on senior (PhD candidates) and junior (Masters and Honours candidates) category entries. This year there is also an additional category that will run at the ASFB conference and will include 50% delegate votes and  50% judging panel votes in deciding the winner.

I have been involved in organising the competition the last few years (and as an entrant in the first year) and I have to say that the quality of the videos on offer this year is exceptionally high across the board. They are well worth taking some time to check out.

You can find all the entries and vote in both categories here. And I encourage you to also think about leaving a  comment or two on the videos you enjoy – they take a lot of work to put together and getting feedback always helps make it worth it.

 

 

 

When push comes to shove in recreational fisheries compliance, think ‘nudge’

Mary Mackay is a PhD candidate (at the Centre for Marine Socioecology University of Tasmania, Australia) researching the role of incentives, regulations, and nudges in influencing compliance behaviour of marine resource users. I had a chance to catch up with Mary at the recent International Marine Conservation Conference in Malaysia and hear about the work she is currently doing and her recent publication. As it was so interesting, I then convinced her to stop by Fish Thinkers and share the details in the guest post below:

When push comes to shove in recreational fisheries compliance, think ‘nudge’

Common to recreational fishing research is a lack of official reported data, which makes it pretty hard to get a full idea of what’s going on.

Fish Thinkers online: 2017 in review

Fish Thinkers six most popular Instagram posts of 2017

At the end of each year I like to put up some customary navel gazing i.e. a review of the Fish Thinkers year. It is a summary mainly as a record for myself as I find it useful to look at our blog and social media stats and see what people are particularly interested in.  Although there is also the odd chance someone else is vaguely interested—since people have brought up parts of the review before, I guess a few people are anyway. Here is the 2017 review:

Pregnant Sharks and Rays Abort Offspring When Fished

Pregnant Sharks and Rays Abort Offspring When Fished – Guest post by Kye Adams

Have you ever seen a viral video of a shark or ray giving birth (e.g. River Monsters)? Unfortunately, it turns out these videos have a pretty dark explanation: There’s a fairly high chance the female is actually aborting her pups due to the stress of being caught.

Species on the move

A prediction of the preferred environmental habitat for the range-shifting yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi) for March 2008, based on a combination of preferences for sea surface temperature, current speed and sea surface height.

Curtis Champion is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies – University of Tasmania. He stopped by the Fish Thinkers blog to give us a run down on some of the research he is working on.

Species on the move and a quick explainer about how range-shifts are commonly identified

Climate. Change. No doubt you’ve heard of the phenomenon. And while a small number of our political reps sporadically break into the headlines for criticising its reality, the global scientific community has been busy forging novel territory to understand its ecological consequences. This emergent field is most-commonly referred to as “species redistribution science” because plants and animals shifting where they live (generally towards the poles or up mountains) in response to changes in temperature is perhaps the most perceptible ecological effect of climate change.

5 free ways around the great paywall of academia. #Updated 2019#

Picture: Severin. Stalder CC BY-SA 3.0 via wikimedia commons

If you do not have subscription access to academic journals through an institution then to access a large proportion of academic journals you will be charged a fee for each paper; fees of $30 or more per article are common. And if you need to access a lot of papers then the cost quickly adds up. Needless to  say many people don’t have the means to pay. Of course you could stick to open access journals i.e. free to read and download (Head to the directory of Open Access Journals for easy access to a whole range of open access journals), but by doing so you will miss a lot of what’s happening in the academic world*.

If you can’t afford to pay then you have a few options to get around the paywalls.

Here are  5 ways around the great paywall of academia;

Top shelf bottom feeders

If you are in Jervis Bay and see someone knee deep surrounded by rays or alternatively sitting staring at rays for hours on end then chances are you are looking at the “mother of rays”  otherwise known as  Joni  – the driving force behind the Stingray Diaries. She’s studying smooth stingrays throughout the Jervis Bay Marine park, in conjunction with Fisheries NSW and gives us a rundown on her research in her guest blog below…

Learning to swim by getting thrown off the end of a busy public wharf on the Hawkesbury River in nothing but a pair of hot pink floaties… Living in a swimsuit and covered in sand every single day of the year… Chucking tantrums when told to come inside after playing on the beach all day because it was dark… At the age of 4, saying with great certainty, “Mum, when I grow up I’m going to be a Marine Biologist.”