Sharkbait!

It’s the old, old story of ecology: You can’t do just one thing.

Sharks have been fished intensely on the eastern coast of the U.S. for the shark-fin soup industry. I’m not sure if the large commercial fisheries follow the traditional method of cutting the dorsal fin off a live shark and letting it swim off to die. Sharks are not cute and cuddly, so the “Protect the shark!” lobby is small. But their numbers have declined 97% to 99% since 1970, depending on species.

And guess what? The smaller predators, no longer chased down and eaten by sharks, have bloomed in numbers. They are eating the shellfish that form an important U.S. fishery.

The study — by a team of Canadian and U.S. scientists — found that intense fishing for sharks in the northwest Atlantic over the past 35 years has produced a cascade of unexpected effects. With fewer large predators in the sea, the number of rays, skates and small shark species has exploded, and these species are decimating such shellfish populations as North Carolina bay scallops and the Chesapeake Bay’s American oysters.As many as 73 million sharks are killed each year to supply fins for shark-fin soup, a Chinese delicacy.

Charles H. Peterson, a professor of marine sciences biology and ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who helped write the paper, said he and his colleagues calculated that between 1970 and 2005, the number of scalloped hammerhead and tiger sharks may have declined by more than 97 percent along the East Coast and bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead sharks have dropped by more than 99 percent.

Some of these species of sharks are now in danger of extinction.
Put this all together with the way that jellyfish blooms are taking over some parts of the Pacific ocean where the bony fishes have been devastated by overfishing and with the recent upsurge in large squid along the west coast, and it spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E. We’re changing the balance of nature, perhaps permanently.

The Science Notes book review: Monkey Girl

In the first four chapters of the book, Humes sets up the situation, explains the issues from different points of view, introduces the new characters, and discusses how the school board, driven by a few of its more religous members, held up the approval of a standard textbooks and tried to ram in an anti-evolution textbook against the wishes of the teachers. When that failed, the books were mysteriously and “anonymously” donated and the high-school science curriculum was changed, precipitating an educational crisis and a court case.

I’ve finished the book. Humes tries to be understanding, but it’s clear that the sins against logic, reason, and honesty were on the side of the religiously motivated schoolboard, which blustered, then threatened, then sneaked in their textbook as a supposedly anonymous donation, then lied under oath about their methods, their motives, and their words again and again. The parents who were the plaintiffs, in contrast, appear as concerned and caring, reluctant to be dragged into the spotlight, but feeling that they had to speak up for the sake of their children.

Glass jellyfish

From the “Monday funnies” of CEOexpress.com:

When is a jellyfish not a jellyfish?

When it’s actually a glass sculpture…, part of a collection of amazingly lifelike glass sea creatures created by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka in the 1880’s.

In that era, aquaria and natural history museums were opening all over the world. And as the techniques for preserving real plants or creatures were so rudimentary, they needed life-like replicas to exhibit and turned to Leopold Blaschka to provide them.

During the 1860s, Leopold supplied glass sea-anemones to museums, aquaria and private collectors all over Europe. He then added snails and jellyfish to his repertoire and in 1876 received a large order from London’s South Kensington Museum. Some of the Blaschkas’ replicas were based on illustrations in natural history books, such as Philip Gosse’s 1853 A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, all the early sea-anemones, for instance, were modeled on such illustrations.

Other replicas were inspired either by the Blaschkas’ own memories of seeing the real creatures – like the first jellyfish which Leopold remembered from a trip to North America – or by copying preserved specimens. In later years, as the Blaschkas became wealthier, they acquired live specimens to work from. These were kept in a specially built aquarium at their Dresden home.

Hat tip to Road of Iron