Shark News: a lot is riding on Discovery's Shark Week, sharks hunted at Reunion Island

This Sunday will begin Discovery Channel's 25th year for Shark Week, and as it hits the quarter-century mark, it finds a lot riding on its success.  While Shark Week has been heralded within the entertainment industry as a major revenue-maker, it has also received considerable criticism over the years for perpetuating shark stereotypes and myths and emphasizing shark attacks over shark conservation.

This season's programming should prove to be interesting as there appears to be a few more pro-shark programs scheduled - or at least so it would seem by the advance publicity.  Discovery channel has also chosen to push the use of social media by teaming up with Thunderclap in support of three major worldwide shark conservation organizations: the Pew Environment Group, Oceana, and Shark Savers.  Through Thunderclap, Twitter and Facebook users can pledge to these organizations and when a certain level is reached, a mass message is sent turning the cause into a trending topic - and giving Shark Week more exposure along the way.

Discovery is very clever in promoting Shark Week and they have a lot riding on its success this year.  The network recently announced its earnings and while they should respectable growth and profitability, they did come under expectations.  Additionally, Discovery is expecting advertising revenue to soften a bit and they have had to juggle some of their other programming due to the competition offered by the Summer Olympics.

For shark advocates (and Shark Week critics), perhaps they will begin to see more of a change in focus in the type of programs Discovery offers.  Shark conservation efforts continue to gain momentum both nationally and internationally and the folks at Discovery are smart businesspeople.  I expect they will react to any public trend or attitude that will provide a continuing high level of viewership - and therefore a high level of advertising revenue.

One definite downside in recent shark news is the decision of the French government to allow for a number of sharks to be culled around Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean where there has been a rise in shark incidents - 7 attacks and 3 fatalities since 2011.  The government will be paying a bounty for bull sharks, suspected of being the primary predator involved in the recent spate of attacks.  Unfortunately, while bowing to public pressure and feeling the need to take some sort of immediate proactive action, the powers-that-be in Paris are failing to notice, or simply ignoring, the fact that the bull shark is considered a 'near threatened" species by the IUCN and that such culling efforts typically end up not confining themselves to one particular species.

According to reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle, environmental groups are advocating a different approach that centers on measures to limit the disposal of waste along coastal areas, a practice they believe attracts more local fish and, by extension, more sharks who are lured close to shore to feed.  Unfortunately, it doesn't sound as dramatically decisive in the island's best interest to curtail throwing garbage in the sea, compared with boldly eradicating the evil predator responsible - the unsuspecting shark who is simply behaving the way nature intended for tens of thousands of years.

Source: Fast Company
Source: Washington Post
Source: San Francisco Chronicle

South Carolina Bull Shark: video captures surprise visitor in local inlet

Another shark video is making the viral rounds on the Internet.  But rather than be one that invokes sadness or anger for depicting some poor trophy prize hung by its tail or a sea of shark fins drying in the sun, this short video from South Carolina illustrates a unique quality of what is considered to be one of the more aggressive sharks.

Along South Carolina's North Myrtle Beach is House Creek which is fed by tens of smaller creeks and streams and ultimately spills out to the sea.  This transition from fresh to saltwater makes for brackish water that some ocean fish are able to tolerate.  One such animal is the bull shark.

If you have not yet seen the video, a young woman, Sarah Brame, accompanied by her fiance and stepfather, was fishing off the dock at Cherry Grove Inlet, a small body of water connected to House Creek by a small feeder stream.  As she was reeling in her first fish, a local variety called drum, a 5-6 foot bull shark suddenly lunged, breaking the surface and taking her catch in one swift flurry of splashing water and hungry shark.  Quite a remarkable piece of video (see below).

What makes the video all the more remarkable is its illustration of the bull shark's ability to withstand brackish to near fresh water, which allows it to move up streams and rivers and get into places where you least expect to find a large shark.  (See the map of the Cherry Grove Inlet and House Creek.)  Bull sharks have been found many miles upstream in South American rivers and the famous Matawan Creek shark attack of 1916 in New Jersey, which many at the time attributed to a great white, was, in hindsight, very likely a bull shark.

Bull sharks are also one of the more aggressive sharks.  Aggressive in that, when on the hunt, they do not rely on a single massive bite, like a white shark will do to a seal (or a mistaken swimmer).  Instead, the bull shark will hunt large prey with repeated bites.  This has been borne out by reports of swimmers or surfers who, when attacked by a bull shark, found that it would give chase and bite repeatedly in a rather tenacious, never-give-up manner.  While a bull shark, like all sharks, do not single out humans as a specific prey, it is this determined behavior by the bull shark that puts it in the top four of most dangerous sharks (the other three being, white sharks, tiger sharks, and oceanic white tips).  I have had the opportunity to get up close with a variety of shark species and the bull shark is the one that draws my utmost attention.

After Sarah lost her catch in such a spectacular fashion, her fiance and stepfather contemplated taking their 10-foot boat out on the water to track down the shark, but after a few minutes on the water, they rethought the matter.

"We need a bigger boat and a bigger net," said Van Hughes, Sarah's stepfather.  "We need a bigger boat."  Now, where have I heard that before. . . . 

According to Dan Abel, shark researcher at the Coastal Carolina University, "It's not like just because we saw this shark yesterday that was just chasing this fish that was struggling on a line means that everything is going haywire.  They're out there all the time anyway. It just so happens that this one opportunity a person caught it on film."

Just another apex predator doing its thing.

Source: KPLCtv.com
Source: CarolinaLive.com