The subject of shark bites was our last day of conference wake up call – a subject that the media worldwide is completely obsessed with. Dr John West, the keynote speaker, described how the general attitude to sharks has turned from “The only good shark is a dead shark” to a dawning that sharks are a natural component of our ecosystem and people now don’t automatically call for the death of sharks after there has been an incident. In fact today, most of the time the victims and their family are the first to call for the protection of sharks. We have certainly witnessed this changing attitude in both the public and the media around Cape Town. The amount of people using the ocean has increased dramatically over the last 40 years. More people are surfing and with efficient wetsuits – they are surfing for longer, and SCUBA diving continues to increase in popularity, as does swimming and snorkeling.
Dr. Shivji wins the Student's Choice Award (Photo: Cheryl-Samantha Owen / SOSF)
The rest of the morning was a lucky dip of talks from human-shark interactions, a media analysis of the changing attitudes of divers towards sharks to the use of a remotely operated vehicle to study shark behaviour. Shark filming legends Ron and Valerie Taylor, who attended the conference, were once champion spear-fishermen before they turned into marine and shark life advocates. “Marine life belongs to all of us, not just the fishermen, and we should be able to see them (the sharks and other fish) anytime we want,” Valerie exclaimed to me with twinkling eyes ready for another shark expedition or underwater adventure.
The final session included four SOSF supported research projects – all looking at the big plankton eating sharks – basking and whale sharks. If we unravel the mysteries behind the big fauna and offer them protection we cover the ecosystem and web of life that surrounds them. Dr. Mauvis Gore discussed the ‘Ups and downs of being a megaplanktivore’ by illustrating how both basking and whale sharks dive in a number of distinctive patterns, including V-shaped spikes, W-shaped sawtooth and oscillatory staircasing! – in search of prey. Deni Ramirez-Macias covered her work on whale shark population size and structure in La Paz Bay, Mexico, and David Rowat presented some interesting observations on the long term residence in coastal aggregations of whale shark in Seychelles and Djibouti.
The end of conference dinner was an absolute blast, with many distinguished scientists hitting the dance floor – AND our very own Dr. Mahmood Shivji won the Student’s Choice Award for best presentation. He did do a superb job of talking genetics in a language that made perfect sense to the non-geneticists amongst us. A heart felt thanks goes to the star of the event, Michelle Heupel from James Cook University for organizing such a gathering of brilliant and passionate people. I am certainly inspired and ready to go forth and spread the word on what sharks are up to under the sea and exactly why we need to save them.
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