The Shark-Free Marina Initiative

Their motto is, "Reducing worldwide shark mortality, one marina at a time."

Here are the basics: A shark-free marina does not allow shark to be killed and landed at their facility. Through the Shark-Free Marina Initiative, businesses are able to register as shark-free and mandate that no caught shark is allowed on their docks. In some states, fishing for shark is still legal ( so the initiative also allows businesses to register as shark-friendly. A shark-friendly business asks fishermen to release caught shark, and strongly discourages international shark fishing.

Why do people kill sharks?

Shark fin soup is a traditional Chinese dish served at weddings, symbolizing wealth, power, and honor. An estimated 70 million sharks were caught and traded last year. Due to its cultural importance, the demand for shark fin soup still remains despite having significant impacts on diminishing shark populations. Hawai'i was the first state in the U.S. to ban shark fin soup, and now the Oregon House just passed a bill to ban it. Hopefully other states will follow suit?

In addition to soup shark is prepared in other ways, but soup is the main problem because fishermen will catch a shark, chop off its fins, and throw it back out to the ocean to bleed and die.

Personally, the thought of eating it makes me gag.

© Fiona Ayerst/Marine Photobank

Sharks are also being thoughtlessly murdered as bycatch in fisheries. The target species may be tuna or swordfish, but fishing methods are not species specific. Therefore sharks, dolphins, whales, seals, sea turtles, and marine birds are all caught unintentionally.

What will happen if all the sharks are gone?

Total ecosystem collapse. Sharks are a keystone species, and regulate populations of other marine animals such as stingrays and various fish. If the populations of these prey organisms grow out of control, the ecosystem becomes imbalanced. 

I will attempt to explain:

No sharks/top predators --> More prey --> Prey animals eat more smaller animals (like crab/shrimp/scallops/smaller fish) --> Prey populations explode --> Prey populations eat ALL of the smaller animals --> No more shrimp or scallops for anyone (including humans) --> prey populations die --> this trend continues down the food chain until ecosystem reaches zero productivity.

I hope that made sense. Long story short, sharks and other top-predators like tuna and carnivorous whales are incredibly important to oceans worldwide. 

People are beginning to learn that sharks really aren't as dangerous as the Hollywood movies portray them to be. They're actually more dangerous to you if you eat them: shark is known to have high levels of mercury and toxins due to biomagnification. 

Watch the PSA:

Click here for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Sharks.

How can you help?
You can do your part to keep sharks on this planet by choosing smart, sustainably caught seafood. Avoid tuna or swordfish unless they were caught with a pole by a local fisherman. Ideally you want to stay away from any fish caught using gillnets, and avoid eating shrimp caught with shrimp trawls!
Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch

Dolphin Washed Up Dead — Gulfport, MS

Still more and more dead animals are washing up on Gulf of Mexico beaches. This dolphin, covered in orange spray paint, was found in Gulfport, Mississippi on May 15th by a local woman. The carcass had been tagged on May 13th by the Institute for Marine Mammal Research (the orange spray paint on the carcass says "IMMR"). The IMMR apparently just left it there to be cleaned up later, decomposing in the hot sun.

Laurel Lockamy, the Gulfport resident, returned the previous day just as a yellow bulldozer arrived to scoop off the dead dolphin and carry it away. The bulldozer carried it away down the beach, and dumped it behind some beach vegetation. So now it is still decomposing in the hot sun, but now it's behind some bushes.

© Laurel Lockamy - Gulfport, MS

These are beaches where families take their kids to play. Dead animals keep washing up... is this safe? Why aren't parents worried about their kids playing next to dead, decaying sea turtles, dolphins, and birds on the beach? The strandings of dead animals have become so frequent in the Gulf now that locals have begun bringing their cameras with them to the beach and documenting the strandings themselves.

“All these dead things on the beach. It never used to be like this before. I’m almost afraid to walk on the beach anymore," said Laurel.

Read the article about this dolphin stranding.

How Most People View the Ocean

There's really so much out there that we don't know and understand. So let's not just ignore it.

Photo from xkcd.

Bill Nye's Climate Lab!

Find the website here.

Bill Nye the Science Guy has been a hero of mine for as long as I can remember seeing his shows on TV and in grade school classrooms. He's now got this cool new website "Bill's Climate Lab" to show how everyone can make a difference in the fight against global climate change. It's really neat!

At first I thought it would be lots of "kids stuff" I already knew, but it actually has some pretty solid science and I realized it is actually more focused for adults more than kids.
Bill Nye is the coolest, ever!

It's Now Sea Turtle Nesting Season in the Gulf!

Latest reports from sea turtle biologist Donna Shaver of Padre Island National Seashore indicate that 78 Kemp's ridleys have already nested along the Texas coast! Want to see exactly where they've been nesting? Click here for a map!
In addition, the Atlantic green turtles are nesting in Tortuguero, Costa Rica; the loggerhead turtles are nesting on the West Florida coast; leatherbacks have arrived to nest on Eastern Florida beaches as well as Southern Georgia. There's a lot going on everywhere!

But now that the sea turtles are nesting and the little hatchlings will emerge soon, there is much to be done to ensure that the babies make it out to the sea. Here's a quick little list of just some ways to help out:

• Owners of beachfront property must turn out any porch lights after sunset, and use blackout curtains to keep light from getting out of their homes and shining out towards the beaches. Light bothers nesting sea turtles (except for red light). Plus, little hatchlings use light reflection off of the waves from the moon and stars to guide themselves toward the water. If they instead follow city lights inland, you will have lots of dead baby sea turtles all over city streets and parking lots in the morning.
• Again, if you own beachfront property, make sure you clear the beach of any umbrellas, chairs, or other obstacles that may block a sea turtle mother from nesting on the beach.
• And also, lock up your garbage because loose garbage = raccoons = animals that will eat baby sea turtles.
• Clean up beach litter to prevent sea turtles from becoming entangled, or to prevent them from eating it. Ingestion of plastic causes intestinal blockages, malnourishment, and may eventually lead to death.
• Support sea turtle conservation projects! Join a volunteer night patrol.

It's exciting news to hear about nesting sea turtles, especially with the abnormally high numbers of stranded turtles popping up everywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. This year so far we've already seen the sea turtle death toll reach way higher than the normal average (around 150 reported). Most of the time though, accidental catches of sea turtles by fishermen are not even recorded, and the dead sea turtle is thrown overboard to sink and decay at the bottom of the ocean. Scientists estimate that the real number of marine mammals harmed in the BP spill may be up to 50 times higher than what we can observe.

The high number of sea turtle deaths may not even be because of the oil spill—it is most likely because of shrimp trawling. The data all points to shrimp trawling as the top killer of sea turtles in the United States.