2016: A Year in Review

‘Tis the season for end-of-year recaps, and I’m certainly up for jumping on the bandwagon. 2016 was year that I wanted to try and revive this blog a bit, which was at least partially successful.  Finishing up a dissertation didn’t do me any favors as…

It’s Tough Out There for a Parasite

In this latest installment of “stuff I’ve found in a shark stomach,” something was eaten by a spiny dogfish in the process of munching on something else.  While looking at stomach contents lavaged out of dogfish captured during the 2016 winter tagging cruise, I found,…

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…

A Practical Guide to Making Sharks Puke

A funny thing happened since the last time I posted: a paper of mine got published.  As of last week, this paper on evaluating a nonlethal way of collecting shark stomach contents has been available via Google Scholar.  Authored by myself, my advisor, and a…

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…

Help with Prey ID

Long time no post, I know.  The main reason for that has been the sheer amount of field work I’ve found myself involved with this semester, all of which somehow came to a head in the past month.  On the bright side, now that I’m…

AES 2012: Day 3 Highlights

Lots of cool talks today as this conference continues to be very good at keeping me busy.  Check below the jump for the rundown on what I found interesting.

AES 2012: Day 2 Highlights

What a busy day.  I’ve only got a little bit of time to get this up before I have to head over to the poster session, and I saw a lot of very good talks today.  Keep following #AES2012 on Twitter to keep up with…

Declining Predators eat Mediterranean Jellies

It 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. …

101 Uses for Shark Puke Part 2: How Much Do Sharks Eat?

The last time I wrote about the usefulness of shark puke, I discussed a few of the less obvious uses of diet studies on sharks.  As apex predators, sharks can sample a wide variety of potential prey species, and diet studies can provide just as…