Tag Archives: Sharks

Researchers Develop Test Tube Plan to Save Grey Nurse Shark

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Reuters recently reported on a long-term effort by Australian scientists to use artificial insemination and growing fetuses in test tubes to save the endangered grey nurse shark.

The grey nurse shark is apparently a docile marine creature that used to be plentiful off the eastern coast of Australia. Today, however, there are only an estimated 500 grey nurse sharks left there.

According to Reuters, the grey nurse shark was inaccurately blamed for a number of shark attacks and ruthlessly hunted until the 1960s. Unfortunately the species has never recovered.

Part of the problem is the species’ reproductive system which has evolved to include intrauterine cannibalism. According to Reuters,

. . . grey nurse embryo pups develop a jaw and razor-sharp teeth very early in their development and cannibalize siblings in the womb.

The sharks have two wombs in which a dominant pup will consume its siblings, leaving only two surviving pups every two years when the shark breeds.

In order to increase the odds of the grey nurse shark surviving off the coast of Australia, researchers there are working on methods to artificially inseminate the grey nurse sharks in captivity. In July the Melbourne Aquarium began an experiment artificially inseminating a seven-gill shark. if that experiment is successful, the same technique could be applied to the grey nurse shark.

But that doesn’t solve the problem of the intrauterine cannibalism. According to Reuters, another group of Australian researchers has come up with an even more radical plan — inseminate and grow grey nurse shark embryos in test tubes.

Reuters quoted New South Whales state fisheries biologist Nick Otway as saying,

Once the embryos have developed to a certain size (10 cm) they actually have a fully functional set of jaws and teeth, then they swim around and cannibalize their siblings. We have to bypass this cannibalistic phase. Once the animal gets through that stage it fends for itself. It just swims around the womb eating, we just have to feed it.

All these techniques pioneered with animal research being turned around and used to help save endangered species.

Source:

Scientists to breed test-tube sharks. Reuters, July 28, 2005.

Mary Max: Stop Making Fun of the Sharks

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Every year for the past two decades, the Boston Big Game Fishing Club has run its Monster Shark Tournament. Fifty to sixty boats compete to capture the largest shark.

This year’s contest made national news when one competitor captured an almost-1,200 pound tiger shark, although the shark was brought back into the harbor six minutes too late to qualify for the tournament. Still, such a big catch brought national stories and an appearance for the crew on the Today Show.

That offended animal rights activist Mary Max who posted an e-mail complaining that, “NBC makes fun of shark suffering.” It said, in part (emphasis added),

Please send an e-mail to the Today Show at today@nbc.com to let them know how
appalled you are by the story they aired on the 8:00am half hour segment,
Thursday, July 21, about the brutal killing of a shark at an annual shark killing
contest off the coast of MarthaÂ’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

In the segment, the four men who caught the almost 1200lb. shark gushed over
their kill. By the men’s own description, the shark suffered horribly,
struggling for hours, being gaffed again and again, until he was finally dragged on
board, thrashing for air. (Especially chilling was the laughter and
congratulations from the people standing around watching this magnificent creature being
tortured.)

Please let the Today show know that it is bad enough that certain individuals
like to bash sharks for behavior that is completely natural, but it is even
more disconcerting to see a highly regarded show join in on “the fun” by
making light of the shark’s suffering.

The Humane Society of the United States chimed in as well, complaining in a press release that,

“Contest killing of sharks or any animal is an affront to a civilized society,” said Dr. John Grandy, senior vice president for HSUS wildlife programs. “In this case it contributes to further declines in shark populations while adding to the stigma that surrounds these magnificent predators.”

“Shark killing contests should go the way of the bison killing contests of old. They perpetuate cruel and unnecessary treatment of some of the most ancient and fascinating of the ocean’s creatures,” Grandy said. “Many shark species, including blue and thresher sharks, have suffered dramatic population declines and can ill-afford to be the target of this sort of dubious enterprise.”

Of course, the Humane Society of the United States forgot to mention that the annual contest is carried out with the approval of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and actually benefits that public agency.

Gregory Skomal, a shark expert with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, told the Associated Press that many of the sharks end up with his agency after the tournament,

You have to kill them to do the samples that produce the best scientific data. We do the same for other fisheries as well. If the shark tournament goes away, we lose an avenue into this type of science.

The meat from the huge tiger shark that was six minutes late was donated to the Long Island Council of Churches.

Sources:

The HSUS Issues Statement on Shark Killing Contest. Press release, Humane Society of the United States, July 22, 2005.

Animal rights group calls for end of shark hunt. Associated Press, July 29, 2005.

NBC Makes Fun of Shark Suffering. Mary Max, July 25, 2005.

Tiger shark too tardy to get teeth in tourney. Joe Dwinell, MetroWest Daily News, July 20, 2005.

Ban on Shark Finning in Atlantic Signed

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Over 60 nations this week signed an agreement to ban the killing of sharks for their fins in the Atlantic Ocean.

The ban was unanimously approved by members of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, including the United States. The United States has had a ban on shark finning in its territorial waters for more than a decade.

Sharks are killed for their fins which are used in soup. According to the Washington Post, a bowl of shark fin soup can garner upwards of $100 a bowl in Asia.

South Korea was one of the nations that originally balked at the ban, and the ban has a huge catch — any nation can opt out of the ban up over the next six months before it goes into effect.

An estimated 20 to 100 million sharks are killed annually worldwide.

Sources:

Atlantic ‘shark finning’ ban signed. Associated Press, November 22, 2004.

Measure protects Atlantic sharks. Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, November 26, 2004.

CITES Protects Whale, Basking Sharks

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Just two days after rejecting a similar measure, the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species voted this week to protect whale and basking sharks. This is the first time CITES has included a shark species on its protected list.

Unlike most sharks, both whale and basking sharks are filter feeders who grow to large sizes (the whale shark can grow to more than 60 feet long) by feeding on plankton.

The population of both species have declined in recent years in part due to the practice of finning, where sharks are captured, their fins chopped off, and the animals then returned to the water where they die.

The sharks are not fully protected from such hunting, but countries that do hunt them will be required “to take the necessary steps to prove that their trade isn’t posing a detriment to the species.”

Source:

UN body protects monster-sized sharks. Michelle Pinch, CNN, November 27, 2002.

Renewed Call for a Global Shark Finning Ban

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European conservationists are joining a campaign to call for a worldwide ban on shark finning — where sharks are caught, their fins cut off while they are still alive, and then the sharks are dumped back in the water.

According to The Shark Trust and the European network of Sealife Centres, human beings kill up to 100 million sharks each year, with many sharks killed just to harvest their fins for use in soup.

Shark finning is a lucrative business, with a single fin from a whale shark or a basking shark being worth as much as $14,500. Total exports of shark fins from Europe in 1999 totaled an estimated 2 million tons.

The United States has prohibited shark finning in its territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea since 1993, and in February 2002 extended that ban to its Pacific Ocean waters. Finning is also prohibited by state law as well in most coastal states.

Source:

Global shark-finning ban urged. Alex Kirby, The BBC, April 26, 2002.

Tibor Machan on Shark Attacks and Animal Rights

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The recent story of the young Florida boy who almost died from a shark attack made national news, but philosopher Tibor Machan noticed something odd about those news reports — where the animal rights activists?

Machan quotes from an MSNBC story describing how the shark tore off the boy’s arm. The boy’s uncle then wrestled the shark to shore where Ranger Jared Klein shot the animal four times and a volunteer firefighter used a clamp to retrieve the arm so doctors could attempt to reattach it. Machan writes,

Few among us would have hesitated at this choice: boy’s arm versus life of shark. Of course the boy’s arm is more important, and so the shark had to go.

Yet, there are millions of animal-rights advocates around the world, many of them Hollywood celebrities with easy access to talk shows and news reporters, who have remained completely silent about their professed view — namely, that human beings are not more important than non-human animals.

If, in fact, you accept the general animal rights view that granting special status to individuals based on their membership in a certain species (specifically homo sapiens) is immoral, it is hard to see how you could justify the “murder” of the shark. I’m surprised PETA hasn’t rushed out a special billboard denouncing those who would callously kill sharks in order to save members of their own species.

The weird thing is this: animal rights activists who did come out in favor of the shark in this case would certainly be roundly denounced. Yet when those same activists campaign against the very sort of life-saving animal research that led to the medical advances that enable people to survive such deadly attacks — not to mention the reattachment of severed limbs — they rarely face any sort of sustained condemnation. In fact, if anything, the media will often go out of its way to express a general uneasiness with animal research.

Source:

Shark versus Boy. Tibor R. Machan, The Mises Institute, July 11, 2001.