Expedition White Shark: iTunes app on controversial tracking of white sharks

For those who watched National Geographic Channel's limited series Expedition Great White, where marine biologist Dr. Michael Domeier tagged great white sharks with satellite tracking tags, there is now a companion app for iPhone, iPod, and iPad that allows you to see, in real time, the latest progress in monitoring the location and migratory routes of the sharks that were tagged.

The Expedition Great White series generated considerable controversy among many shark advocates and shark researchers in large part due to the methods used to capture and secure the animals so that tags could be attached and other tests could be performed, like blood and sperm samples. There were issues raised as to whether the elaborate procedure employed to corral the sharks was causing more harm than good and Domeier is currently evaluating the capture procedure and the method of securing the tags themselves to hopefully minimize short- and long-term harm.

While Domeier's current and future methodologies will be scrutinized by many in the shark research and conservation community, the new app does provide some interesting information for the curious that might not be obtained unless a deliberate effort was made to seek it out and and read about it. Such is the clever attraction of many of today's apps.

With Domeier's app, called Expedition White Shark, you can view the latest position data for a group of tagged sharks and examine their past tracking patterns over time as they migrate between either Isla Guadalupe (off Baja, Mexico) or the Farallon Islands (off Central California) and the mid-Pacific area Domeier refers to as the Shared Offshore Foraging Area (SOFA), also referred to as the "White Shark Cafe" by other researchers.

There are other features to the app including pictures and videos - although their operations were a bit clunky in actual use; videos did not present themselves in the right aspect ratio or screen size, so some distortion occurs and many of the other images are of lower resolution. Perhaps that will be corrected in future updates. The app also includes some interesting great white shark facts and a game for children that takes a juvenile white shark through its early years to sub-adult.

Personally, I find the real time tracking of the sharks to be the most interesting feature. My primary concern is that to gain this kind of information, which other researchers have also provided by using more "conventional" means, I hope that, in the future, Dr. Domeier will be able to develop capture techniques that will prove less traumatic for the animals thereby garnering more support from the shark community as a whole.

Available on iTunes, proceeds for the $3.99 app go to Domeier's San Diego, California-based research organization, Marine Conservation Science Institute. The institute is currently working with the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation on tracking tiger sharks in and around Florida and the Caribbean.

Source: 10News.com
Source: NorthCountyTimes.com

Shark Tagging Controversy: permits are being sought for a hotly contested technique

The controversy regarding shark researchers who were tagging great white sharks with satellite tags by virtue of a very elaborate and hotly contested technique just does not seem to want to go away. In part, that is due to the indignation of many shark advocates who feel that the sharks were unnecessarily exposed to risk that was not justified by the data that was obtained. And, in part, it is due to the hard line position taken by many of the participants involved and the government officials who provided the permits to allow it to take place.

While there were those who questioned the technique - hooking a white shark, tiring it out and hoisting it aboard the deck of a ship, bolting on a satellite tag, and hopefully releasing the animal unharmed in a matter of minutes, the situation became a major media disaster when one capture went terribly wrong and a white shark may have been traumatized and left mortally injured. A year later, the shark was videotaped looking emaciated and apparently severely injured from various shark bites. While some gave the lead shark researcher, Dr. Michael Domeier, the benefit of the doubt, others accused Domeier's technique of injuring the shark and setting it on a course of poor health and a bleak outlook.

Recently, San Francisco's ABC News station KGO-TV ran a report on the entire controversy as a follow up to the news that Michael Domeier had requested another permit from the National Marine Sanctuaries, which is entrusted with the conservation and protection of the great white sharks at Northern California's Farallon Islands.

Here's the report. You can make up your own mind as to what the future action of the government agency should be regarding permits. And, you can let your opinion be known to the Farallon Marine Sanctuary Superintendent Maria Brown at maria.brown@noaa.gov.

Tracking Great White Sharks: researcher reconsiders a controversial technique

The first shark I ever filmed professionally, to this day, probably remains as my all-time favorite: the great white shark. There are certainly sharks that can rival its beauty. And I have had my adrenaline pumping while swimming in the midst of other sharks in a frenzy - something you don't see with white sharks. But there is something so overwhelmingly magnificent when I am in the presence of a great white, that it still takes my breath away (or maybe I'm just trying not to spook the shark with my bubbles).

Because of that special allure, I have always been interested in their survival and the research and conservation efforts of others to solve the mysteries regarding their lifestyle that still exist today. As those mysteries are slowly unraveled, we will be better educated as to how best to manage and protect the remaining white shark populations, which are in perilous decline.

Over the past year, there has been quite a controversy within the shark research and, particularly, the shark advocate community regarding the research methods of Dr. Michael Domeier - techniques that were featured in the National Geographic television series Operation: Great White and can be seen in Nat Geo's new series Shark Men. Domeier devised a method that entailed hooking a great white, tiring it out to where it could be pulled up onto a large boat platform and hauled out of the water. Then, with only a few minutes available to Domeier's team, blood samples and measurements were taken and, most importantly, a long-range, long-term satellite or SPOT (Smart Positioning and Temperature) tag was bolted to the shark's dorsal fin. The shark was then released and tracking of the shark's position would begin in the hopes of determining more precisely what the migration patterns were of these animals.

From the start, there were questions as to whether this particular technique Domeier had devised was harmful to the sharks. It certainly wasn't a minor procedure and appeared fraught with animal trauma from the moment the shark was hooked to when it was dragged aboard to its final release. I, for one, had expressed concern that the method seemed overly complicated - a kind of Rube Goldberg attempt - and one that was perhaps better suited for the making of a dramatic television show.

There were some shark researchers who had expressed both concern over the method of capture and the quality of the data. But the scientific and academic community is a small and tightly-knit world and so opinions were, for the most part, somewhat muted.

However, the online world of shark advocates had a field day with Domeier, particularly with one horrendously botched attempt that left a white shark, named "Junior", with a large portion of the hook lodged deep in its throat. Recently, pictures of that shark have emerged one year after its capture and they show a noticeably emaciated shark with severe wounds that may or not be a result of the bungled tagging episode. The simmering cauldron of online opinion once again went into full boil.

So, what is the latest in this controversial saga? With National Geographic Channel's Shark Men about to air, what can we expect from Dr. Domeier and his white shark research? Well, according to MSNBC, Domeier is in the process of retooling his research techniques. While still defending his capture methods, he is not pleased with the tags themselves and how they are attached. These SPOT tags are rather large and when attached to the shark's dorsal fin, can apparently cause deformation or damage. Domeier is investigating techniques for attaching SPOT tags that would minimize any possible damage. To better focus on this problem, he has chosen not to participate in the television series. From a crisis communications/PR perspective, it's also not a bad idea to take yourself out of the limelight for a while when surrounded by controversy.

Researchers are often faced with difficult decisions regarding the methods by which they gather data, the cost to the subject in question, and how much public media exposure can be advantageous in securing funding or possibly setting you up for intense scrutiny and even ridicule. I would hope that technology would prevail and powerful, long-lasting tags - much smaller and lighter in design - could be developed which would negate the need for such elaborate capture methods as Dr. Domeier felt compelled to employ.

We owe the sharks that much. Even a 16-foot, 3,000 pound great white shark deserves a little tenderness now and then.

Read MSNBC's article on the Domeier controversy.

White Shark Tagging: controversial technique flounders in the Farallons

Controversy is now dogging the white shark tagging efforts of Dr. Michael Domeier of the Marine Conservation Science Institute. The SPOT (smart positioning or temperature) tagging began in Isla Guadalupe under the eyes of a film crew for a National Geographic Channel program to air on the 19th. It involves a technique whereby the shark is hooked and reeled on board, aerated with a water hose, while the crew literally drills and bolts a satellite transmitting tag to the shark's dorsal fin.

This is a rather elaborate tagging technique that has generated much concern within the shark conservation community (click here for prior posting about the Isla Guadalupe taggings, and here are two from other sites: click here and here).

Now, Dr. Domeier has moved northward to the Farallon Islands and, with the approval of Maria Brown, superintendent for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, has been tagging sharks there but with less than optimal success. Apparently, one shark swallowed the hook deep into its throat causing the bait's float to become lodged in the shark's jaws, thereby blocking access for the aerating water hose and requiring the cutting of the hook by working straight through the shark's gills. All in all a disaster in humane animal treatment as far as I'm concerned.

While there are concerns about the stresses this type of tagging places on the shark, there is also the question as to the need for more data acquired in the Northern California area. Dr. Barbara Block of Stanford, Dr. Pete Klimley of UC Davis, and others have amassed a considerable body of data that tracks the migratory patterns of these animals. They and their colleagues just recently issued a detailed report that can be viewed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, published online on 11/04/09 in the Biological Sciences section ("Philopatry and migration of Pacific white sharks").

I always felt that this particular tagging technique was a more elaborate mousetrap than necessary. Now its efficacy has become controversial, the California data may ultimately be redundant, and the National Marine Sanctuary must defend a decision to allow catching a protected species in a manner that would most likely not be allowed for, say, a protected marine mammal.

Too many questions, too much controversy. . .

Read article in Bay area bohemian.com.