New Dogfish Species Found in Taiwanese Fish Market

The Order Squaliformes, home to the dogfish sharks, is one of the most diverse groups of sharks currently swimming the oceans, second only to the Carcharhiniformes in sheer number of species.  Within that order is the Family Squalidae, made up of the very familiar spiny…

Hunting Bull Sharks in the Neuse

Yesterday I got the chance to wake up before dawn and head down to Morehead City to help out Duke PhD student Meagan Dunphy-Daly in her research on bull sharks and their habits in the Neuse River.  She has a guest post up at the…

Harpoon Fishing is Totally Badass

Bycatch is a huge problem in commercial fishing operations.  The need to make trips out on the water worth the expenses of gas, gear, and work-hours means that often commercial gear is designed to capture as many fish as possible in the shortest amount of…

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…

101 Uses for Shark Puke

Earlier today WhySharksMatter and I had a little light-hearted smack talk about new-school (stable isotopes) vs. old-school (gastric lavage or straight-up dissection) methods of measuring the diet of sharks.  These are the things you could be privy to if you were following me on that…

Playing With Sharks in Charleston

As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve spent the weekend in Charleston hanging out with David “WhySharksMatter” Shiffman and taking part in the coastal shark survey run out of the Charleston SCDNR lab.  Since most of my work has been based on trawl data, I…

How to Not Catch Dogfish

Even the biggest fan of spiny dogfish can’t deny that these little sharks sure are great at choking up entire nets.  This is especially problematic for commercial fishermen who are trying to catch anything other than dogfish, and particularly for fishermen targeting silver hake, one…

Carcharhinus linkamanus

In my blogging absence, a lot of interesting stuff has happened and been written about.  And let’s face it, at this point I’ve pretty much accepted link posts as part of my usual output. Two more blogs for the SFS network!  Check out The Birds,…

Feeding Habits Analysis: Detective Work

As anyone who’s ever done a diet study will tell you, you end up getting a lot of unverifiable gunk in your study animal’s stomach contents.  Sometimes enough of the consistency remains that you can tell generally what this chunk of meat used to be. …

Spring Break: Continental Shelf – Pictures from Day 10

As promised yesterday, here are pictures from yesterday’s sampling fest.  Behold the glory of gastric lavage. Thanks to Geoff for helping with the photography while I was busy inducing vomiting.   First you’ve got to get the tube in.  It looks uncomfortable, but it beats…