Save Our Seas Blogs

Today – Tuesday the 18th May 2009, marks the official launch of an initiative that the Cape Eleuthera Institute is very proud to be a part of.  The new website for the shark free marinas initiative is now live and you can see it at www.sharkfreemarinas.com. The shark free marina initiative is a voluntary association of resorts and marinas who have taken notice of the threatened status of many species of shark, and have now banned the landing of any dead animals.

The goal of the shark free marina’s initiative is to reduce some of the 391,800 sharks caught and killed by recreational anglers in the US every year, most of which are utilized for nothing more than a set of jaws on the wall and a couple of photographs.

The initiative is not seeking to curtail the recreational fishing of sharks, but instead to work collaboratively with recreational fishermen to encourage catch and release.

Please visit www.sharkfreemarinas.com

Something I have been meaning to write about for a while was the recent visit of the SOSF film and photo crew in the form of Tom Peschak and Dan Beecham.  We had an amazing ten days out catching sharks – the weather did not always play ball but such is life.  The boys managed to bring the sharks with them and we got our first Caribbean reef sharks of the spring as well as several tigers, one of which we put a pop-up satellite tag on.  You can catch up on the boys version of events here,here, here and here!

The tag – as so many do – popped off after only a week, but in that week the shark had crossed the Exuma Sound, passed through the Exuma Islands, and was mid way across the Tongue of the Ocean when the tag popped off.  That’s a journey of 120km in only a few days.  More on what the shark got up to whilst crossing all that deep water when I have had a chance to look at the data.

I will leave you with a number of truly amazing photos courtesy of Mr. Tom Peschak – Thanks Tom!

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Another greater hammerhead comes to play

The Bahamas is essentially a haven for shark life as longline fishing was banned here in 1993, however that’s not to say illegal longlining by foreign vessels doesn’t go on in remote parts of the archipelago.  The end result is that the diversity and abundance here is as close to a baseline level as you will find anywhere in the world…..  an amazing thing given the endangered nature of sharks.  And that is what makes this story so sad…..

So a little while ago the son of one of our visiting scientists was wandering the docks of the local marina and spotted a large bull shark.  Unfortunately the shark was dead, killed in the early hours of the morning by a group of guys who were having a party in which the side entertainment was killing this young female shark.

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This would be a great opportunity to introduce a coupe of bright young ladies who have been working for the CEI Shark program since January this year.  They are part of the Bahamas Environmental Steward Scholarship (BESS) program which is run by the Cape Eleuthera Institute in collaboration the Bahamas Reef Environmental Education Foundation (BREEF).  The BESS program provides funding for graduating Bahamian high school students to pursue a 14 week academic semester at The Island School followed by a six month internship at CEI, BREEF or another participating environmental organization in The Bahamas.  Jazz and Alannah have very quickly made themselves indispensable members of the shark team here at CEI and will be sorely missed when they eventually move on to university later this year.

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