[Coral-List] sharks

Douglas Fenner dfenner at blueskynet.as
Tue Sep 28 18:21:56 EDT 2010


My message on sharks got away from me before I could finish, appologies.

The new article on Caribbean reef sharks is entitled:

Large-Scale Absence of Sharks on Reefs in the Greater-

Caribbean: A Footprint of Human Pressures



It is available open-access on PLoS One, full reference below.



It makes what looks to me like a very convincing case that the loss of sharks there was primarily due to fishing.  It also shows how only light fishing can remove them.  The results were based on over 76,000 surveys by REEF volunteers.



Ward-Paige CA, Mora C, Lotze HK, Pattengill-Semmens C, McClenachan L, et al. (2010) Large-Scale Absence of Sharks on Reefs in the Greater-Caribbean:

A Footprint of Human Pressures. PLoS ONE 5(8): e11968. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011968



It is also availalble free from the REEF website

www.reef.org/reef_files/wardpaid_sharks_plosone2010.pdf



The reference for the study finding that removing grouper (coral cod) leads to an increase in prey is 

Graham, N. A. J., Evans, R. D., and Russ, G. R.  2003.  The effects of marine reserve protection on the trophic relationships of reef fishes on the Great Barrier Reef.  Environmental Conservation 20: 200-208.



I have written an essay on the removal of large reef fish from reefs around the world (which has quite a few refrences) which is on the web in a couple places: 



"The largest fish on coral reefs were the first to go."



http://www.coralscience.org/main/articles/climate-a-ecology-16/decline-large-coral-fish



http://www.sharksavers.org/en/education/sharks-are-in-trouble/399-loss-of-large-fish-on-coral-reefs.html





Doug



News from "Science Now":  "Record Hot Summer Wrecks Havoc."

Science Now reports that NASA says this year so far is the hottest on record in the 131 years of record keeping.  Nearly 0.7 C hotter than the average from 1951 to 1980, and NOAA has found essentially the same thing using different data.  Nightime temperatures hit record highs in 37 states this summer.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, has found near-record ice area loss so far this year in the Arctic, and expects the area to hit a record low this year.  Ice volume is at a record low, 10,000 cubic kilometers lower than the average of the last 30 years.  Ice volume is being lost at 17% per decade.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/record-hot-summer-wreaks-havoc.html?etoc=&sms_ss=email



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