The fish the sharks live on are depleted from overfishing, so the sharks are coming closer to shore looking for food, and encountering humans.
brightmoonsays
I used to live near a beach in the Rockaways Every summer people would drown in knee high water because of the currents. I used to wonder why they never closed the beach .
aleX_testsays
Hi Mano -- I love your blog. Recently I switched from following an RSS feed of all of FTB to just following you and a few others. But now the RSS updates (of just your blog) only contain the first few sentences of the post, and not the full thing. All the feeds for other authors seem to have the full post contents. Do you know who I can message to fix it?
Matt Gsays
Katydid@1- whaling in the Pacific causes killer whales to go to shallower water where they kill the sea lions who eat the sea urchins who destroy the kelp forests which provide habitats for many other species. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly….
Katydidsays
@Matt G, yes, that may be true in the Pacific, but on the East Coast (remember the movie Jaws from 1976-ish?), there’s a bunch of great whites that have always swum up and down the coast. There’s a oceanic site that lets you track the ones that have been tagged. Shark attacks on the east coast have happened--they’re rare, but they do. They’re becoming more and more frequent now, particularly around Virginia Beach, which seems to have the “right” conditions for sharks to get close up to people.
Reginald Selkirksays
If you want a truly deadly beach, go to Australia. Jellyfish, blue-spot octopus, sea snakes.
Mano Singhamsays
aleX-test @#3,
You could click on the ‘Tech Issues’ link at the top left and report this. We do not have a webmaster so I cannot promise that that will get fixed.
As I understand it, if you click on the link to the RSS feed, you will get the full post.
gddiversays
Matt G@3, sea lions do not eat sea urchins. Urchin population explosions have been due to the near extinction of sea otters which were hunted to near extinction for the fur trade. More recently sea star wasting syndrome has caused a dramatic reduction in sea star populations and, since some sea stars are urchin predators, an explosion in urchin populations.
Orcas have several different populations and each one has different prey and hunting techniques. Our resident orcas in Puget Sound primarily prey on salmon and consequently are doing very poorly right now. There is evidence that they are supplementing their diet with other fin fish, not going after marine mammals. Another group of orcas, known as transients, specialize in marine mammals and are doing rather well right now since pinnipeds are protected and have seen a population increase. In South Africa there are a pair of orcas (named port and starboard) that specialize in ripping the livers and other organs out of great white sharks.
Finally, I find the panic about shark attacks somewhat amusing. Sharks are amazing creatures and rarely regard humans as food. Most attacks due seem to be mistakes. I watched a 12 foot long tiger shark attack a turtle off the coast of the big island last December. After the turtle successfully avoided becoming lunch the shark investigated me and actually bumped my
Katydidsays
@Reginald Selkirk: if one wants to be killed by flora and/or fauna, Australia seems to be the place to go! Have you seen the picture of the quiet-looking meadow with the caption, “There are 425,990,548 things in this picture that can kill you”?
The fish the sharks live on are depleted from overfishing, so the sharks are coming closer to shore looking for food, and encountering humans.
I used to live near a beach in the Rockaways Every summer people would drown in knee high water because of the currents. I used to wonder why they never closed the beach .
Hi Mano -- I love your blog. Recently I switched from following an RSS feed of all of FTB to just following you and a few others. But now the RSS updates (of just your blog) only contain the first few sentences of the post, and not the full thing. All the feeds for other authors seem to have the full post contents. Do you know who I can message to fix it?
Katydid@1- whaling in the Pacific causes killer whales to go to shallower water where they kill the sea lions who eat the sea urchins who destroy the kelp forests which provide habitats for many other species. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly….
@Matt G, yes, that may be true in the Pacific, but on the East Coast (remember the movie Jaws from 1976-ish?), there’s a bunch of great whites that have always swum up and down the coast. There’s a oceanic site that lets you track the ones that have been tagged. Shark attacks on the east coast have happened--they’re rare, but they do. They’re becoming more and more frequent now, particularly around Virginia Beach, which seems to have the “right” conditions for sharks to get close up to people.
If you want a truly deadly beach, go to Australia. Jellyfish, blue-spot octopus, sea snakes.
aleX-test @#3,
You could click on the ‘Tech Issues’ link at the top left and report this. We do not have a webmaster so I cannot promise that that will get fixed.
As I understand it, if you click on the link to the RSS feed, you will get the full post.
Matt G@3, sea lions do not eat sea urchins. Urchin population explosions have been due to the near extinction of sea otters which were hunted to near extinction for the fur trade. More recently sea star wasting syndrome has caused a dramatic reduction in sea star populations and, since some sea stars are urchin predators, an explosion in urchin populations.
Orcas have several different populations and each one has different prey and hunting techniques. Our resident orcas in Puget Sound primarily prey on salmon and consequently are doing very poorly right now. There is evidence that they are supplementing their diet with other fin fish, not going after marine mammals. Another group of orcas, known as transients, specialize in marine mammals and are doing rather well right now since pinnipeds are protected and have seen a population increase. In South Africa there are a pair of orcas (named port and starboard) that specialize in ripping the livers and other organs out of great white sharks.
Finally, I find the panic about shark attacks somewhat amusing. Sharks are amazing creatures and rarely regard humans as food. Most attacks due seem to be mistakes. I watched a 12 foot long tiger shark attack a turtle off the coast of the big island last December. After the turtle successfully avoided becoming lunch the shark investigated me and actually bumped my
@Reginald Selkirk: if one wants to be killed by flora and/or fauna, Australia seems to be the place to go! Have you seen the picture of the quiet-looking meadow with the caption, “There are 425,990,548 things in this picture that can kill you”?