Tell Discovery to Protect Sharks, Boycott Shark Week

David Shiffman's interview with Discovery's Shark Week executive Paul Gasek
has taken place, and is posted on David's blog.


http://southernfriedscience.com/2009/07/07/interview-with-discovery-channel-executive-paul-gasek/

Gasek failed to address the point of our Manifesto--that his company is
making a great deal of money victimizing sharks by cultivating hatred and
fear of them, when they are on the verge of extinction.

He failed to address the fact that Discovery is considered by reputation to
be an educational channel, so that people believe, when shown sharks as
monstrous killing machines, that they really are. The truth is that they
are not. People all over the world swim with sharks for pleasure, an
activity which is possible because sharks are social, calm, intelligent, and
do not target people for food.

As expected, Gasek repeated similar platitudes to those he gave The Shark
Group representatives when they met with him. When asked about his
background, he said he had experience making natural history programming,
but he failed to mention that he spent 10 years as a commercial fisherman.

He also failed to mention the level of his scientific education, which is
relevant given that he is the scientific advisor for Shark Week. A
scientific advisor with no scientific education is questionable in
itself. When our representatives met with him, he thought that throwing
turkeys to tiger sharks was science.

At this meeting, he said that the horror factor of Shark Week was an
institution, but that they were using it less. This year's subject matter
consists of five out of six new shows focused on shark attacks, so no effort
is being made to improve the content of Shark Week in terms of presenting
sharks as they really are. Absolutely magnificent films about sharks as they
really appear underwater, have been turned down by them. The mention made
of the need for shark conservation is meaningless when they are causing
people to think that sharks SHOULD be hunted to extinction.

Its natural that Gasek would use this opportunity to tell everyone how good
Shark Week is but at our private meeting he laughingly referred to what they
do as SHARK PORN, emphasizing how proud he is of it. It was clear, and clear
to me from seeing what Discovery did to the sequence about shark social
lives and intelligence that I offered them, that Gasek cares about sharks
uniquely in terms of how much money they can make from them.

He glosses over our pointed issues with the slipperiness of an eel.

From a recent article against trying to save sharks from extinction by
Justin Clarke:

“Sharks scare the hell out of me. I’ve watched enough Discovery Channel to
know that sharks are pure killing machines…”

The theme of the Manifesto is to denounce Discovery Channel, owned by
Discovery Communications for profiting from the demonization of ordinary and
important animals on the verge of extinction. It calls for a boycott
against Shark Week programming until they begin to show sharks as they truly
are. Since they began, in 1987, their crimes against sharks have earned them
billions of dollars, and created a wave of hatred of sharks that stands in
the way of their protection from extinction.

If you have not yet signed the Manifesto, here's the link again:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Boycott-Shark-Week

Protect Sharks: start by eating sustainably

A recent IUCN report suggests that 32% of sharks are threatened with extinction. This is dire news for animals that play an important role, especially the large pelagic sharks in the open ocean. A huge part of the problem is bycatch caught in the longlining industry that target swordfish and tuna. Increasingly shark meat is being consumed, but the fin trade is a very serious threat to oceanic sharks.

What can we do? We can start by not eating fish from a source we do not know. If its a sustainable hook and line tuna like Tongol, then that fish can be consumed. If its swordfish that doesnt come from a hand harpooned fishery like that off Southern California then dont eat it. If its at a sushi bar you can be fairly certain that the source is commercial and unsustainable. When you visit a restaurant ask where the fish came from, and if its sustainable. If the server doesnt know at least you might get them wondering. Carry a Seafood guide like those available from the Monterey Bay Aqaurium and the Blue Ocean Institute.

If you arent an activist and dont want to support a non profit like wildaid, you can help sharks by making shark safe seafood selections.



Third of open ocean sharks threatened with extinction
25 June 2009 | News - Press Release

The first study to determine the global conservation status of 64 species of open ocean (pelagic) sharks and rays reveals that 32 percent are threatened with extinction, primarily due to overfishing, according to the IUCN Shark Specialist Group.

The percentage of open ocean shark species threatened with extinction is higher for the sharks taken in high-seas fisheries (52 percent), than for the group as a whole.

“Despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas,” says Sonja Fordham, Deputy Chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and Policy Director for the Shark Alliance. “The vulnerability and lengthy migrations of most open ocean sharks mean they need coordinated, international conservation plans. Our report documents serious overfishing of these species, in national and international waters, and demonstrates a clear need for immediate action on a global scale.”

The report comes days before Spain hosts an international summit of fishery managers responsible for high seas tuna fisheries in which sharks are taken without limit. It also coincides with an international group of scientists meeting in Denmark to formulate management advice for Atlantic porbeagle sharks.

IUCN experts classify the Great Hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) and Scalloped Hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) sharks, as well as Giant Devil Rays (Mobula mobular), as globally Endangered. Smooth Hammerheads (Sphyrna zygaena), Great White (Carcharodon carcharias), Basking (Cetorhinus maximus) and Oceanic Whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus) sharks are classed as globally Vulnerable to extinction, along with two species of Makos (Isurus spp.) and three species of Threshers (Alopias spp.).

Porbeagle Sharks (Lamna nasus) are classified as globally Vulnerable, but Critically Endangered and Endangered in the Northeast and Northwest Atlantic, respectively. The Blue Shark (Prionace glauca), the world’s most abundant and heavily fished open ocean shark, is classified as Near Threatened.

Many open ocean sharks are taken mainly in high seas tuna and swordfish fisheries. Once considered only incidental “bycatch”, these species are increasingly targeted due to new markets for shark meat and high demand for their valuable fins, used in the Asian delicacy shark fin soup. To source this demand, the fins are often cut off sharks and the rest of the body is thrown back in the water, a process known as “finning”. Finning bans have been adopted for most international waters, but lenient enforcement standards hamper their effectiveness.

Sharks are particularly sensitive to overfishing due to their tendency to take many years to mature and have relatively few young. In most cases, pelagic shark catches are unregulated or unsustainable. Twenty-four percent of the species examined are categorized as Near Threatened, while information is insufficient to assess another 25 percent.

The report is based partially on an IUCN Shark Specialist Group workshop funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program. Fifteen experts from government agencies, universities, non-governmental organizations, and institutions around the world took part. This and other regional workshops have contributed to the development of the Shark Specialist Group’s Global Shark Red List Assessment, supported by Conservation International and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

“The completion of this global assessment of pelagic sharks and rays will provide an important baseline for monitoring the status of these keystone species in our oceans,” says Roger McManus, Vice-President for Marine Programs at Conservation International.

The IUCN Shark Specialist Group calls on governments to set catch limits for sharks and rays based on scientific advice and the precautionary approach. It further urges governments to fully protect Critically Endangered and Endangered species of sharks and rays, ensure an end to shark finning and improve the monitoring of fisheries taking sharks and rays.

Governments should invest in shark and ray research and population assessment, minimize incidental bycatch of sharks and rays, employ wildlife treaties to complement fisheries management and facilitate cooperation among countries to conserve shared populations, according to the group.

Oyster Farming in Drakes Bay: Forum | KQED Public Media for Northern CA

Oyster Farming in Drakes Bay: Forum | KQED Public Media for Northern CA

Posted using ShareThis

Sustainable Aqauculture or incursion on a Wilderness Area? The Drakes Bay Oyster Company has been operating in the Drake's Bay Estero in the Pt Reyes National Seashore for decades. New regulations and an impending lease end are pressuring the enterprise to shut down.
Yesterday I paddled and filmed in theestero, launching kayaks from Johnson's Bay, the location of the Drake's Bay Oyster Company. It is an amaazingly lovely location, and the oysters were some of the best I have ever eaten. Are oysters impacting the wilderness? This program has an excellent analysis.

SeaHorse Trade

A video on Seahorses I helped make with KQED. Like shark fins, the trade of sea horses for medicinal use and curios is impacting our ocean unsustainably.


QUEST on KQED Public Media

Seahorses are some of the most enchanting and mysterious creatures in the ocean. They are also in trouble, struggling to survive in threatened habitats around the world, while large-scale trading of seahorses for the traditional Chinese medicine market goes unchecked. Meet the Seahorse Sleuths - local scientists who are working to unlock the secrets of these elusive creatures so that they can save them from extinction.

Support Rational Shark Programming: tell Discovery Channel to Support Sharks

Despite promises in a meeting with shark advocates and filmmakers in New York two years ago to promote shark awareness Discovery Channel is still promoting the hype and fear of sharks in their sensationalistic Shark Week programming. We have a responsibility to raise awareness that promote sane and sustainable ocean practices. Sharks are an important component fo a healthy ocean and the fear and hype generated by shark attack films is harmful to sharks.

Tell Discovery No.

Discovery Channel Manifesto.http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Boycott-Shark-Week

One Third of open ocean sharks face extinction: study

Thu Jun 25, 1:52 am ET

Third of open ocean sharks face extinction: study AFP – A third of the world's open water sharks -- including the great white and hammerhead (seen here being …


PARIS (AFP) – A third of the world's open water sharks -- including the great white and hammerhead -- face extinction, according to a major conservation survey.

Species hunted on the high seas are particularly at risk, with more than half in danger of dying out, reported the Shark Specialist Group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The main culprit is overfishing. Sharks are prized for their meat, and in Asia especially for their fins, a prestige food thought to convey health benefits.

The survey of 64 species of open water, or pelagic, sharks -- the most comprehensive ever done -- comes days before an international meeting on high-seas tuna fisheries that could potentially play a role in shark conservation.

For decades, significant numbers of sharks -- including blue and mako -- have perished as "by-catch" in commercial tuna and swordfish operations.

More recently, the soaring value of shark meat has prompted some of these fisheries to target sharks as a lucrative sideline, said Sonja Forham, Policy Director for the Shark Alliance, and co-author of the study.

The Spanish fleet of so-called surface longline fishing boats ostensibly targets swordfish, but 70 percent of its catch, by weight, from 2000 to 2004 were pelagic sharks.

"There are currently no restrictions on the number of sharks that these fisheries can harvest," Fordham told AFP by phone. "Despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas."

Sharks are especially vulnerable to overfishing because most species take many years to mature and have relatively few young.

Scientists are also set to meet in Denmark to issue recommendations on the Atlantic porbeagle which, despite dwindling numbers, failed to earn protection at the last meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), in 2007.

Canada led the charge to block the protective measure, supported by Argentina, New Zealand and some Asian countries.

Europe is the fastest growing market for meat from the porbeagle and another species, the spiny dogfish.

The demand for shark fins, a traditional Chinese delicacy, has soared along with income levels in China over the last decade. Shark carcasses are often tossed back into the sea by fishermen after the fins are cut off.

Despite bans in international waters, this practice -- known as "finning" -- is largely unregulated, experts say.

The report identified the great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead sharks, as well as giant devil rays as globally endangered.

The smooth hammerhead, great white, basking, and oceanic whitetip sharks are listed as globally vulnerable to extinction, along with two species of makos and three types of threshers.

Some 100 million sharks are caught in commercial and sports fishing every year, and several species have declined by more than 80 percent in the past decade alone, according the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

The IUCN issues the Red List of Threatened Species, the most comprehensive and authoritative conservation inventory of the world?s plants and animals species.

 

 

 

 

Searching for Sygnathids
Last year, when I heard that the 8th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference was to be held in Fremantle, West Australia, a plan for a grand science adventure began to take shape. This conference is held only once every 4 to 5 years, and if you are researching fish that are found in the Indian or Pacific oceans, which includes the most diverse coral reef ecosystems anywhere, this is the conference to attend. Since the founding of the Academy’s Seahorse Research & Conservation Program in the Fall of 2006, our group of students, research associates, and staff had made significant progress on using DNA sequence analysis to understand fundamental questions about the taxonomy, evolution, biogeography, and conservation of seahorses and their relatives, the sea dragons, pipehorses, and pipefish. So three of us set out to share our work with our colleagues, and learn from them as well.

In traveling half way around the world to attend this meeting, we find ourselves in southwest Australia, which is a center of diversity for seahorses and their relatives. In fact right around Fremantle is the West Australia seahorse Hippocampus subelongatus, found nowhere else in the world but the southwest corner of this vast island continent. Possessed by this unique and poorly understood group of fishes, four of us set out after the meeting to find seahorses and pipefish in their natural habitats along a 1200km stretch of coastal Western Australia. Healy Hamilton PhD

Road Trip to Exmouth, Fremantle, June 6th Log from David McGuire, Field Associate
Exploring, Explaining and Protecting the Natural World. In our efforts to fulfill the mission of the California Academy of Sciences, we are exploring a remote coastline in Western Australia searching for a strange and unique family of fish. I am with Dr. Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences as part of an expedition collecting and identifying seahorses and their relatives – the sea dragons and pipefish. Besides Dr. Healy and me, the team includes Academy Research Associate Graham Short and UC Santa Cruz Graduate Student Norah Saarman.


Our first dive took place early Saturday morning near the port city of Freemantle with the help of Kevin Smith- a local parks manager and colleague studying the Syngnathidae, the family of fish that include seahorses, sea dragons, pipehorses and pipefish. Here in the antipodes it is near the winter solstice and the morning is sunny but cool as we gear up to dive into the calm waters beneath a jetty. Threading our way among the monofilament cast by the fishermen overhead, Norah discovers a seahorse, Hippocampus subelongatus, a species found only in southwestern Australia. My job is to help with the logistics including dive safety, and to document the expedition and the animals in the wild.
Somewhere in the murk Healy and Graham are finding other individuals of the same species and taking small snips of tissue from the tiny fins for DNA analysis. (See Healy’s Blog Post) Kevin collects two pipe fishes Vanacampus sp. and Histiogamphelus sp - cousins to seahorses in the sea grasses nearby. The animals are remarkably cryptic and it takes a practiced eye to distinguish the thin camouflaged fish among the thick meadow of sea grass.

Road Trip to Exmouth: June 7
The first dive is a propitious beginning to the expedition and we are now ready to drive north to explore the open coastline. We rent the “Apollo”; a camper van that will be our home for the next two weeks for the road trip over 1000 kilometers north. Loading our dive gear, camera equipment and collecting nets we head north along Highway one skirting the remote coastline of this remarkable continent. Driving on the left hand side of the road and shifting with the left hand takes a small adjustment, but once we exit Perth the road is wide open. Early Sunday we depart Fremantle on our expedition, driving 300 kilometers north to camp alongside the Murchison River in a rustic campground. Road camping is an Australian national pastime, and the caravan parks and highways are filled with trailers, modest RVs and combis driven by people of all ages. People are so friendly they wave to their fellow campers as we pass. The funny thing is, nearly everyone passing along the narrow two lane highway is a fellow camper and my wrist gets weary from the Australian salute.

Diving with Sharks and Syngnathids Mon – Thursday Sharks Bay
Monday we drove another 300 kilometers North to the town Denham: a small town on the Peninsula bisecting Sharks Bay. Heading north past the last coastal town of Geraldton, the road veers inland so there will be no diving at this stage, but a landscape of the outback rolling past in a montage of red dirt, green scrub, Eucalyptus trees and dead kangaroos. At last we hit the coast at Sharks Bay and after inspecting the ancient stromatolite mats and shell beds of accreted clams at Hamelin, we continue scouting the peninsula looking for likely dive sites. Pulling into a touristy spot on the remote highway before Denham, we spoke to the manager at the Sharks Bay Ocean Park, a marine tourist outpost before the major resort areas of Denham and Monkey Mia. This small aquarium holds a 2.7 m tiger shark, a Loggerhead sea turtle, and several other local animals from the bay. The young manager was extremely helpful and we hired his boat and dive gear and were able to camp out near the aquarium on the bluff overlooking the sea. Norah’s first snorkel at sunset revealed two sea moths and a pipefish living in the sea grass beds bordering the rocky beach: a promising sign.


From Norah Saarman, Shark’s Bay
“We pull up in the evening. The low scrub and savannah stretches to meet the calm water of Shark Bay. I am a little nervous as I pushed out into the shallow water of the bay, my mind cognizant of the wild things lurking beneath the dark ripples. Once my mask enters the underwater world, my thoughts slow to meet the rhythm of the sea. I observed the seagrass beds, marcro-algae and rippled sand bottom. Something catches my eye; Pegasus volitans, a sea-moth. Pegasids are distant cousins of the seahorses, but their armor body-plates and mystical translucent wings give the impression that they come from the same far-off lands. I am excited, and swim back to shore to share the good news. With such a good start, I can’t help but re-enter the water even as the sun kisses the blue horizon. Another Pegasid! And then, the fish we have traveled so far to find; the endemic Festucalex scalaris. The pipefish gives me a look of indifference as if he is protected by a magical barrier. The camouflage this group of fishes wears is admirable. I am lucky to have paused over this particular bed of sea grass among the other densely covered bottom of Shark’s Bay. What a lucky find. “

Shark Bay diving, June 8th-9th
Inspired by Norah’s discovery, we take a small open boat out early next morning to Eagle Bluff, skating south over the clear shallows of the bay. An hour later we sighted a few small sharks including a Wobegong (which woefully I did not see, having struggled with a flooded camera housing); some nice schools of trevally, emperor fish, blue damsels and several species of wrasses among the coral heads: but no sygnathids.
nearly uninhabited, a flat blue bay and a lot of red dirt. The pelicans and cormorants are a pied black and white and nest on the small islands off the bluff. But for their coloration they could be the same as those that live off Baja and California. Hours in the water are fruitless and the weather is turning from pleasantly sunny and mildly cool to a blustery breeze and dark wet menacing clouds.
The following day we boated in the rain to Morgan reef – a “muck dive” in the shipping lane in about 15 meters, where we thought we had a chance of observing syngnathids. The squally weather with a strong wind blowing against the tide turned into a steep chop and strong surface current. As Dive Master, I tended the vessel while the others dived the bottom: surfacing 45 minutes later in another fruitless venture. Perfect habitat, lots of food – where were our fish?
On the way in, we snorkeled the shallow sea grass for over an hour but again without luck. With the rain and wind and absence of fish, we packed up and bid our adieus and headed North to the town of Carnavaron, another 300 k away. Typical of what we have experienced throughout the expedition, the crew at Ocean Park were so friendly and helpful and it was hard to depart before the promise of a BBQ with the crew: but our duty to find syngnathid fish prevails.

Friday Carnavaron- Coral Bay
Passing the 24th Parallel towards the equator we are nearing the tropics and the land here is rich and green with large sand washes and dry riverbeds indicating torrential rains. The jeeps all have snorkels and the road crossings are posted with depth meters for the heavy rainfalls when the summer monsoon visits. In the hamlet of Carnavaron we met with a local biologist Adam and Photographer Brad Cox, employees of the local water board, but both are avid divers. A former research biologist, Adam has collected seahorses and pipefish throughout the area. With their help, we were able to pinpoint a few likely locations on our map. Adam directed us out to Point Quobba, 60km northwest, where we camped near a weathered rock promontory with powerful surf and blowholes effervescing like whale spouts into the sky. At dawn, biology mirrored geology as six Humpbacks spouted and breached beyond the point.
The water is much warmer here and the tropical influence is evident in the marine fauna. Our morning snorkel on the inner reef revealed Parrotfish and wrasses not seen farther south, but aside from a few reef sharks and some colorful coral heads, the team observed no study animals. At 11 we met Adam back in town and he generously took us out to the sea grass beds in the yellow submarine, a hard plastic inflatable boat. Adam had previously collected sea horses out on the shallow sea grass beds outside the dredged harbor. Dugongs and turtles also live in the shallow waters in the summer months, but after a few hours the only animal of note was yellow-banded sea snake swimming in the dense sea grass. Struck out again.

Watering up and renting some tanks and weights from Brad, we motored another few hundred kilometers up the coast towards the huge bay of Ningaloo, a whale shark mecca and with luck, a seahorse haven.


Saturday 6-9-09 Lighthouse Bay, N.West Ningaloo Reef WA
Driving at sunset the red dirt and the red light makes the landscape feel like Mars. The road is littered with the carcasses of Kangaroos and the occasional Emu and the ravens and eagles dine on the road kill. Now at sunset we see many kangaroos at the roads edge and some standing statue-like in the road and we must carefully avoid running them down. Like deer, the Kangaroos dart across the road at night and most of the vehicles have “roo bars” to avoid the serious damage a large kangaroo can inflict on a vehicle (not to mention the Kangaroo).
Here in the Antipodes it is close to the winter solstice and the twilight casts a low red glow for nearly an hour, guiding us through the Roos and into Coral By, the entry point to the tourist Mecca of Ningaloo Bay. Here we camp in our first Caravan Park among the gentry of the camping set, replete with power, hot showers, an internet café and watered lawns. The park of over 200 sites is full so we are guided to a small spot off the grid: no power but we revel in the first fresh water showers and first salt free towels since Fremantle.
The next morning we rent kayaks and set off to explore the outer reef. Most of this area is a marine park, Australian’s term for protected areas, but much of the area allows recreational fishing. Our permit allows us to collect in Sanctuaries but we are still careful to paddle out beyond the no take zone. The reef is more diverse and we freedive the coral bommies for our target species but again no luck.


After the kayak excursion out to the fringing reef we packed the combi and headed north along the narrow highway. The landscape is vast and flat with a low green scrub and dotted with red termite mounds resembling islands of life in an otherwise featureless terrain. 150 kilometers further north and we arrive in Exmouth, the heart of the Ningaloo tourism but a heartless looking place with new developments and harbors and tourist signs advertising whale shark tours at every corner. Stopping at the dive shop for information and air fills we exit town and head away from the strong east winds to the lee of the west side.


Shark Bay but no Sharks (or sea horses)
Sunday 6-14 after speaking to a local Aussie who has been here a week we camp at the pull off below the lighthouse. Lighthouse Bay is a narrow bay fringed by Ningaloo Reef just south of a series of tall Naval Radio towers. The reef extends into a smaller bay that has all the potential of a left hand southern hemisphere Malibu wave breaking on the coral reef flats.
Sea turtles nest here and our local friend said he observed what sounds might be a Loggerhead turtle laying eggs. We dove the outer reef after kicking nearly a kilometer offshore with the strong offshore wind, bottoming out in about 7-8 meters. No pipefish or sea horses observed here but there are lovely corals and diverse fishes including reef sharks, huge potato groupers, sea turtles and a palette of wrasses and soft corals. The kick against the current created by the offshore wind took nearly an hour and we crawled up the steep sand beach face like tired sea turtles after a long swim.
Exempt from city lights the stars are infinite and the Southern Cross and Magellan Kite are clear among the myriads. There are so many stars that our evening beach walk is lit by the star shine of the Magellanic cloud.
In the evening the wind has switched from the east to a stiff northwest and the boat dive we scheduled has been canceled. I was hoping to film the whale sharks that make this area famous for tourism, but the conditions did not allow.
Tantabiddi. Norah and I kicked out half a kilometer to the moored boats and dropped down in 4 meters. This bay looks like it is scoured by tides, although this is the neap tide of the lunar cycle, we still had a 3 –4 knot current: unlikely conditions for our animals to inhabit.

The following day, we chartered a boat from a local fisherman who took us out to some small islands- the Rivoli- in the gulf of Exmouth. The currents and short chop of the shallow bay kicked up the sediments and we ended up moving to another site after an hour of diving. Our skipper, Ash, is quite a character and being height challenged, he sits on the overhead canopy for better visibility of the water ahead while steering with his feet The second dive was silty and surgy with a building south swell making inspecting the coral ledges and patches of seagrass difficult. Again, none of our target fish were seen. Offshore the whale sharks ply the plankton, but we head inshore for another dive on the fringing reef called the Labyrinth where a dive master informed us they have seen ghost pipefish.

I would like to put a camera on Norah’s head. As my buddy, she swims ahead of me so I can monitor and film her as she searches, but she has seen several sharks, all quickly out of camera range by the time I come alongside. To me sharks are as attractive as seahorses and unfortunately, are threatened by many of the same influences: killed as bycatch, loss of habitat and targeted by the Asian luxury animal trade. On this dive I don’t see a shark or a seahorse, but an increasing surge from a building south swell. We scout the Exmouth Jetty that Dr. Allen Dekelboum -a longtime Academy associate and Dive Doctor- told us was an incredible dive location. The strong swell and heavy winds did not allow us to test the locale and we headed to deeper water.
The final dive of the day we drift off the anchor in several knots of tide at 20 meters over what is termed the sponge garden. Captain Ash must have missed the location because we see few sponges and the bottom looks scoured and barren with patches of small coral clinging to the substrate. The habitat and conditions are decidedly seahorse unfriendly. This bay has a history of intense bottom trawling for prawns and the fleet is still quite active. The fishermen claim that seahorses are recovered in the trawl nets and Healy made contact with their fisheries manager about sharing specimens. All bycatch is required by the fisheries to be discarded so Healy hopes to work through the permit process to obtain a few bycaught seahorses and pipefish from this region.

We have been diving for over a week now, underwater collectively for sixty hours searching hard but other than the Shark’s Bay specimens we have had little luck. Several of the species we seek have been reported by both our colleagues and in the literature so it is a mystery why we cannot locate the animals in some of the areas where we find ideal habitat.

Discouraged by the weather, and with limited time remaining, we decide to head south. Driving the long open road I count ten kangaroo carcasses in a kilometer but I am yet to get close enough for a good full frame image on my camera. These animals are quite shy, yet inexplicably are attracted to the road. Similarly the Emu, a large flightless bird much like an ostrich. We nearly run one of these huge animals down at sunset, narrowly missing another roadside carnage. Anecdotally, I am impressed by the absence of large predators and only large ravens and the occasional eagle feed on the roadkill. Australia once had a marsupial lion and wolf but those are long extinct and it is up to introduced animals and the automobile to prey on the large herbivores.


First stop, Kalbarri: a large forested area of rolling hills that most Australians would call mountains. This remnant of the ancient southern supercontinent of Gondwana is eroded and whittled down by eons of time. The road meets the beach at the mouth of the Murchison River, and again a rough unruly ocean meets our gaze. But we’re here to meet with Mike and Wendy, a couple that run the Sea Horse Sanctuary, a seahorse husbandry operation that supplies animals for the aquarium trade, thereby taking pressure off of harvesting of wild seahorses populations. Mike and Wendy are biologists that have been quite successful in breeding several species of seahorses as well as two colorful and charismatic species of pipefish. After a tour of their educational exhibits, they give Healy several specimens: Hippocampus angustus from Exmouth Gulf, a species of seahorse new to Healy’s DNA studies, and two species of pipefish imported from Indonesia.

From Kalbarri we press on to try to and dive in Jurien Bay, a large natural bay several hundred kilometers north of Perth. Jurien Bay is the newest marine park in West Australia. All along the section of coastline we have touched upon protected areas. Like California, Australia’s marine parks are managed as a blend of levels of protection, with some areas permitting recreational fishing and other extractive activities, to “fish sanctuaries” allowing no fishing at all. Conversations with locals indicate that many areas have has been overfished and they welcome the protections, while others begrudge the closures.

A blessing and a curse: Technology in the Outback
The southern storm hits us with gale force winds and heavy showers so we hunker down and catch up with work on our laptops. It’s amazing how dependent on communication we have become. Graham has been plugged in most of the way via a wireless card through his cell service, and nearly all the Caravan parks and small towns have wireless. The clicking of keyboards is a constant companion on the journey. Expeditions used to take us away for weeks at a time but now we can follow the protests in Tehran while watching Kangaroos scamper into the bush. Norah is from the plugged in generation and connectivity is second nature, but I’m of the era that exploring includes a separation from constant communication. But I am equally guilty and I suppose this blogging from the field is ironic (if not hypocritical). Nevermind.

June 19 Back to Freo
Down but not out, we drive from Jurien Bay to Perth and enter the lower reaches of the Swan River, the major tributary that runs through this city of a million people. The team seines in the shallows of the river and a few sleek, green pipefish of the genus Stigmatopora are caught in the mesh nets, but no seahorses.

Undaunted, we relocate and in the waning light Healy and Norah snorkel the cool 60 degree water and find two Hippocampus subelongatus for a small fin clipping and camera cameo.
The next day is our final dive and our friend Kevin meets us to investigate another dive at the ammo jetty. The inclement sea prohibits this, so we SCUBA the Swan River near where we had visited the day before, diving in a mild current at 4 meters depth. Success visits again as Graham spots several more H. subelongatus rooted among the sponges and anemones on old boat moorings. We use this opportunity primarily for the video since the team already has a large selection of tissue samples from this species, but the large sample size may help with a population study. In the clear waveless water of the Swan, the images of free-living sea horses are the first clear images I have captured in two weeks of searching. The images from this expedition, last years New Caledonia voyage and others will be used for the public floor at the California Academy of Sciences like the Science Now exhibit, web videos and an expedition documentary in progress. I’m a bit happier to collect clear images of sea horses in the wild but the over all effort has been discouraging: however that’s field science and nature filmmaking.

Drying gear, repacking and returning the Apollo back to the rental silo (after removing a small beach of sand from the interior) consume the rest of the day. The evening is reserved for keying out fish, including Kevin’s careful morphometric measurements to identify the Shark’s Bay pipefish as the rare species endemic to that region of Western Australia and rarely collected.
It has been a fortnight of travel and diving and the team dissembles, Healy and Norah to the Museum of Natural History at Melbourne where they will confer with their colleagues and Norah will gain more expertise in the morphology of the fish.
The difficulty and the exertion in sampling and filming marine life is a unique challenge, at times exhilarating but also occasionally disappointing. Sea horses and their kin are being harvested intentionally for the aquarium and medicinal trades, and incidentally as bycatch in the shrimp and bottom trawl fisheries. Important habitat is also being diminished and many species are endangered worldwide. Aside from the wonder of exploring and explaining biodiversity, describing what animals live in a region and how they are related is essential information for wildlife management and resource protection. This is one of the important functions of Natural History Museums like the California Academy of Sciences. With new DNA sampling techniques very few animals are sacrificed for the collections and most are set free with a tiny bit of skin missing.


For more information on Project Sea Horse and the Hamilton Lab’s discoveries go to http://research.calacademy.org/research/cbri/ResearchProjects/phylo.php