Gut Check

A few recent papers in the elasmobranch world have turned some popular assumptions about sharks and rays on their heads.  First and most high-profile was Grubbs et al (2016) dismantling the shark/cownose ray/scallop trophic cascade that not only became so entrenched that it actually ended…

Are Dogfish Running the Food Web?

When spiny dogfish come up in conversation, it’s usually in reference to their supposedly ravenous appetites and the possibility that they’re eating other, more economically valuable species out of the ecosystem.  Luckily for the very beginnings of my research career, this has lead to a…

Dogfish Stick Around in Back Sound and the Importance of Observations

This past week my latest paper, published in F1000 Research as part of their Elasmobranch Biology and Conservation collection, officially passed peer review.  This paper summarizes data collected from some spiny dogfish captured during the Back and Core Sound shark survey that seemed to be…

Dogfish Don’t Eat As Much As You Think They Do

It’s been a long time coming, but the work I’ve been doing on spiny dogfish feeding ration has finally seen publication.  For those with access, the paper (published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management) is now available online (and if you don’t have…

AES 2013: Day 4

Today was the fourth and last day of presentations for this year’s AES.  The real shark week ended with a bang, featuring this year’s only concurrent pair of shark sessions.  As a result, I definitely missed some talks I wanted to see in order to…

AES 2013: Day 3

Day 3 of AES included pretty much all the talks up for the Gruber award, an award given to the best student presentation.  Holy crap there were some good talks today.  My talk was among them, and having seen my competition, I will gracefully concede…

AES 2013: Days 1 & 2

Here it is, the first official recap post of this year’s AES.  I lack both a smartphone and the Twitter vigor of Dave, so I generally throw all the things that piqued my interest into one big post at the end of the day.  It’ll…

Dogfish Puke on the Beach

You may have noticed that it’s been two and half months since something went up here.  I can assure you, I’ve been a busy little grad student in that time.  One of the reasons is that I’ve been working on a couple of field/lab projects…

Predation

A quick look around this blog will tell you that I’m very interested in fish eating other fish.  My Master’s research was on the feeding habits of spiny dogfish, and I’ve tried to keep up with the literature on shark-related predation ever since.  It turns…

Misunderstanding and Abusing Ecosystem-based Management

That ever-reliable settler of internet arguments, Wikipedia, defines ecosystem-based management as “an environmental management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem.”  At heart, this type of management is supposed to keep all the cogs of an ecosystem moving so we can…