What Drives Dogfish Distribution?

I’ve been meaning to get back into writing about research done by other people (especially if it concerns the mighty spiny dogfish) for some time.  Fortunately, a pretty interesting paper has just come out by researchers at Stony Brook and the National Marine Fisheries Service…

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…

Heartbreaking and Heartwarming Tales of Social Sharks

One of the cooler trends in marine science has been the revelation that advanced social and learning behavior are pretty widespread among marine animals, and not just the domain of marine mammals.  Stereotypically, whales and dolphins are considered the big-brained residents of the ocean, able…

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. …

How Italy Ate Up All Its Sharks

As 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…

Great White Sharks Attack Whales. Seriously.

During a literature search for some dissertation-related stuff I stumbled upon quite possibly the most awesome paper ever for a shark fan.  It’s well-known that sharks, especially large, migratory species, supplement their diet of fish and sea mammals by scavenging on whale carcasses.  It’s been…

The Most Badass Fish in the Sea

You might think that the title of this post refers to the spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias), the main species of interest for this blog.  You’d be wrong.  You’d also be wrong to guess the great white, as badass a shark as that is.  This post…

Dogfish and Seals Taking a Bite out of Fisheries?

It should be no secret to readers of this blog or anyone familiar with fisheries at all that spiny dogfish have a pretty rotten reputation among commercial fishermen.  Quickly approaching the notoriety of dogfish are those damn dirty sea mammals, the harbor seals.  Both animals…

The Social Shark Network

Recently Jason Goldman at the great blog The Thoughtful Animal (if you have any interest in animal behavior at all, you should be following it) put up a post titled “Sharks With Friends.”  In that post, he summarizes a recent paper showing that blacktip sharks…

Ageing Spiny Dogfish: Are We Doing it Wrong?

Welcome to the first post in 2012.  It’s probably good to start the new year off with a doozy, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, it involves that scrappy little shark everyone loves to hate.  Spiny dogfish are possibly the most well-studied…