Another Round on the Neuse

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Chuck

Late last summer, I embarked with an intrepid crew of Duke grad students to track bull sharks in the Neuse River.  We came up empty-handed that time, but a year later I found myself going back for another crack at catching, tagging, and following the world’s most dangerous shark an hour and a half from my own backyard.  Since most of the procedures and general background are already covered here and here, I’ll just tell this story in photo essay format.

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Posted in cownose rays, dolphins, dorkiness, grad school, North Carolina, photography, research, sharks | 2 Comments

Declining Predators eat Mediterranean Jellies

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Chuck

ResearchBlogging.orgIt wasn’t my intention to keep picking on the Mediterranean, but this paper was just too damn interesting.  In the Mediterranean, like many other marine environments worldwide, numbers of jellyfish and ctenophores (those really colorful comb jellies, actually not related to jellyfish) have recently exploded.  According to a recent PLoS One paper by researchers from the University of Barcelona (Cardona et al. 2012), a possible explanation may be that their predators are overfished.  This isn’t too shocking a finding (especially in the consistently overfished Mediterranean), but what is interesting is just who some of those predators are.  Also, this paper represents exactly what I like to see in a stable isotope paper.

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Posted in conservation, ecology, gut contents, methods, research blogging | Leave a comment

How Italy Ate Up All Its Sharks

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Chuck

ResearchBlogging.orgAs dramatically imperfect as U.S. fisheries management can be, I still stand by my stance that we have the best-managed fisheries in the world.  Fishermen gripe about it being too restrictive and quick to change, conservationists complain about it being too lenient and slow to adapt, and both have a point.  That said, we could do much worse than the job NMFS is doing.  This is especially true for shark and ray fisheries, where the old practice of lumping all but a few species into one of two “coastal shark complexes” is giving way to species-specific management.  This is perhaps most dramatic for the scalloped hammerhead, which is finally getting its own stock assessments and may be headed for Endangered Species listing.  We’ve come a long way since crashing the Atlantic cod population.  But not every country does as good a job as us…

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Posted in conservation, fisheries management, NOAA, research blogging, sharks | Leave a comment

Enjoying Seafood While Knowing Too Much

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Chuck

I freely admit that I enjoy seafood.  I grew up in New England, where the American seafood industry was practically invented, and now live in North Carolina, where the confluence of cold and warm water at Cape Hatteras makes for some of the richest fishing grounds on the east coast.  I have yet to find something from the ocean that I haven’t enjoyed eating.  At the same time, as a young marine scientist with a fisheries management background, I have the curse of “knowing too much.”  I’m well aware of just how ecologically devastating some fishing methods can be, and can’t even eat dolphin-safe tuna without cringing over the consequences.  I want nothing more than a healthy, biologically-diverse ocean, but part of the motivation for that is that I want the oceans to continue providing my favorite foods.  Though some advocate giving up seafood altogether, continuing to eat seafood can be one of the best ways to promote marine conservation.  Doing so, however, may cost a little more, require a little research, and force you to think differently about some of the staples of your diet.  For an entire blog’s worth of advice (and recipes), check out the excellent Eat U.S. Seafood.  For some of the general rules I try to follow, keep reading.

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Posted in conservation, fisheries, fisheries management, North Carolina, rhode island, seafood, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Case Against Dolphin-Safe Tuna

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Chuck

Here’s another shining example of a post I should have had up a week ago before life intervened.  Last week the World Trade Organization ruled that the dolphin-safe label on canned tuna unfairly discriminates against Mexican fishermen.  The debate could result in trade sanctions against the U.S. and is centered on how “dolphin-safe” is defined.  However, aside from the societal impacts, there are some definite ecological reasons why it may be time to ditch the dolphin-safe label.

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Posted in conservation, dolphins, fisheries, wtf | Leave a comment

The Future

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Chuck

Posts have been a little sparse here for the past month or so, and it’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time a.) finishing up my first year of PhD school, and b.) setting up a new batch of projects set that will keep me busy and provide fodder to write about for the next, oh, 2-5 years or so.  If you’re curious as to how my old projects turned out, check out the previous post on my recently-posted Master’s thesis (Open Access, for those who would like to read it at home).  Starting this summer, I’ll be working on the first to two projects for the next academic year, which will see my research branching out to include many shark species in addition to my old friend Squalus acanthias.

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Posted in blogging, gill nets, grad school, milestone, North Carolina, sharks, spiny dogfish, tagging | 2 Comments

My Thesis: The Liner Notes

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Chuck

Whew.  What a semester end that was (I’m still trying to survive the fallout).  The first year of the PhD is down, and with it hopefully most of my class load so I can get to the fun stuff.  This year also saw the official finishing of my Master’s thesis, which due to the vagaries of due dates has only shown up online recently (and I’m still waiting on the bound copies…).  For those who haven’t checked it out yet, you can find the full text in glorious, open-access pdf format here, complete with only a few formatting errors.  Feel free to peruse it, use parts of it (with proper citation of course), and contact me with any critiques or advice.  The citation format (in AFS format at least) for it would be:

Bangley, C. W.  2012.  Food and feeding habits of the spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias overwintering off the coast of North Carolina and the effects on the marine community.  Master’s Thesis.  East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.

Rather than summarize all the findings and dive into the nitty-gritty of the procedures (which you can get by actually reading the document), I’ll be giving the “behind the thesis” tour of this big paper I spent two and a half years writing.  With any luck, it’ll be somewhat entertaining.  It will also serve as a sort of retrospective before I start ramping up the blog to cover my dissertation work this summer.

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Posted in dorkiness, ecology, grad school, milestone, North Carolina, spiny dogfish, striped bass | 1 Comment

Busy Times, in a Good Way

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Chuck

Apologies for the lag time between posts this week.  I was going strong, but then the end of the semester reared its ugly head.  I’ll likely be slow getting stuff up in the next week or so as I deal with the typical PhD end-of-semester workload.  That said, not everything I’ve been busy with has been homework.  There’s some exciting stuff coming down the pipe in the next month or so.  Stay tuned for official announcements…

In the meantime, I’ll leave this up as an open thread for those who would like to share their best shark stories.  Leave your most awesome, humorous, bizarre, gnarly, or interesting shark encounters in the comments.  All species welcome.

Posted in blogging, dorkiness, grad school, North Carolina, sharks, spiny dogfish | 7 Comments

NOAA/NMFS Not Actually Culling Sharks and Whales

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Chuck

Just to clarify, that previous post was intended to be an April Fool’s joke.  Apparently it was a lot more convincing than my “pictures of dogfish attacking a pelican” post from last year, and is now threatening to go viral as a legitimate news story.  Apologies to anyone inordinately outraged, but April 1st is probably the last day you want to be believing everything you read on the internet.  That said, I hope you stick around for the posts from the other 364 days a year, where I try my hardest to make sure all the facts are legit.

Posted in blogging, conservation, dorkiness, humor | Leave a comment

NOAA/NMFS Plans to Reduce “Problem Species” Populations

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Chuck

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is often painted by fishermen as a rabidly pro-conservation agency hell-bent on putting them out of a job by protecting every species they used to fish.  However, leaked internal memos show that the agency is taking a turn back towards its Department of Commerce roots, and is assessing marine species for their economic value.  For those species found to be more economically damaging than beneficial, a plan to reduce their population to an “economically-neutral” level will be developed and implemented.  Essentially this “Problem Species List” (PSL) is a warped parallel to the current Endangered Species List: species on the PSL will be exempt from any state or federal protections and population-reducing measures such as overharvesting, bounties, and culls will be strongly encouraged (or possibly even required).  The first round of species to be assessed for inclusion on the PSL seem to mainly be considered for their interference with fisheries and shipping, and include the spiny dogfish, blue shark, cownose ray, harbor seal, bottlenose dolphin, and North Atlantic right whale.  The full manuscript of the memo can be read under the jump:

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Posted in conservation, cownose rays, dolphins, fisheries management, NOAA, spiny dogfish, whales, wtf | 3 Comments