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…
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…
I’ve had quite the busy week this week, and because some of it was actually work, I’m feeling the need for nice, light, humorous post today. I had a flash of inspiration today while teaching (it was dichotomous key day, so Latin terms were flying…
On Friday I officially wrapped up going through all my stomach samples from my cruise aboard the NOAA/NMFS R/V Henry B. Bigelow. Though a lot of identification work remains, it’s nice knowing that I at least have one complete data set totally cataloged. In honor…
In the fine tradition of Kevin Z’s linkfest posts at Deep Sea News, I’ve designated this link-filled post with a bad pun on a scientific name. We salty bloggers are classy like that. Anyway, to make up for my lack of activity lately (it turns…
Every so often someone thinks they’re clever and sends me this video. I’ll not sully this blog by actually embedding it, but here’s the gist: a Pacific giant octopus eats a spiny dogfish. Usually this is accompanied by something along the lines of “OMG! Octopus…
And fishermen thought spiny dogfish were bad… From mbari.org. Humboldt squid (Docidicus gigas) are undoubtedly badass animals. Growing up to 6 feet long, capable of living in virtually oxygen-free water, and occasionally cooperating to drag divers to their doom, this species doesn’t even need any…
A brief intermission from Spring Break: Contintental Shelf (I’ll have the final data scoreboard up soon). I wanted to post on this earlier but was busy puking dogfish. It looks like more shots have been fired in the never-ending conflict between sharks and cephalopods. A…
DSN has taken to posting their Twitter posts daily on the blog, and this usually leads to some pretty entertaining finds (plus my first porbeagle post got a shout-out… I’m internet famous!). However, nothing I had seen previously could prepare me for this… Yes,…