Scuba Diving in Grand Cayman

Having worked in Grand Cayman as a dive instructor for nine months, there isn’t much I don’t know about the diving there. Whether you’re planning a dive trip to Grand Cayman, considering whether to try diving there or are just curious as to what it is all about, this post is for you.

Grand Cayman is revered as one of the top diving destinations in the world, and it’s not hard to see why. With a drop off to over 4,000ft underwater around the island, it is only a five minute boat ride to access deep dive sites. The reason for this is that the island sits on top of an underwater mountain so it is entirely surrounded by deep water and pelagic marine life.

Balloonfish

The marine life inhabiting the waters around the Cayman Islands makes it a dream diving destination for avid divers and novices alike. The ocean ecosystem is so diverse, top to bottom, that it makes every dive such a rush. From as soon as you drop below the surface, right down to the bottom, there is life worth seeing every step of the way regardless of how deep you go.

Common Reef Octopus hidden in the reef

Depending on the wind and wave conditions you can often find large mats of sargassum weed on the surface. This weed is home to frogfish, nudibranchs, seahorses, crabs, shrimp and many different species of juvenile fish, and was my favourite spot to start and end my dive as I could hang out with the predators underneath. The mid-water column houses a full range of tiny, colourless microorganisms, invisible until they cruise by your mask with the much larger ctenophores (comb jellyfish), tunicates and salps following suit.

Porcupine Fish

The reef ecosystems in Cayman are an excellent example of what a healthy reef should look like and the coral in particular is extremely healthy. From the brain and boulder corals that build the reefs to the gorgonians and sea fans that baffle nutrients down onto the substrate beneath, it everything about the reef seems alive and well. Just the sheer number of different creatures you can see on a single dive never makes for a dull moment. The reefs are covered with parrotfish, grunts and snapper taking shelter amongst the coral below the schools of chromis and wrasse venturing up in the water column above them. Every crag and pore in the reef holds some sort of interesting organism; lobsters, large clinging crabs and eels being the usual suspects.

Caribbean Spiny Lobster

My favourite part of every dive was the contrast between the reef creatures and the sand habitat surrounding the coral fingers. This is where you would find hogfish, southern stingrays and spotted eagle rays snarfing around in the sand looking for their daily meals amongst the beds of garden eels and rubble piles that house sand tilefish.

Female Southern Stingray

My favourite fish are the large, predatory pelagic fish that come up from the water water off the wall and cruise into these areas. The sinewy, silver type that make one close pass to inspect you and are on their way, i.e. the permit, amberjack and african pompano that fly by without giving you the chance to prep your camera.

 Permit Fish

Found amongst all of this are what Cayman is most famous for: sea turtles! I would say I saw at least one turtle on eighty percent of the dives we did there. If not on the dive then we would definitely see one popping up from the reef on the way in or out.

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Hawksbills are the most common sea turtle with loggerheads heading by every now and then in the spring and summer. Green sea turtles are also very common in a few specific areas of the island. As far as the larger marine life goes, we did run into some sharks every now and again which always gave us something to talk about for the next week or so. While nurse sharks are common, the occasional caribbean reef shark or hammerhead could also be seen. Their cousin, the manta ray, was also spotted in a few rare instances. If you want my advice and are able to make the trip, then grab your gear and jump in. You won’t regret it.

A far more accurate portrayal of Mick Fanning's "shark attack"...

Click here

I believe that Fanning was not attacked at all. The shark's tail fin is what can be seen thrashing at the surface, pointing at a downward angle. This is indicative that the shark simply got caught in his surfboard leash and then panicked so attempted to swim downwards with Fanning still attached to the leash. However, as soon as the leash broke Fanning was released and unharmed. 

If it was an attack the shark would have approached at an upward angle under the board, but it was simply curious as to what Fanning was. It frustrates me that the media have yet again sensationalised and embellished this story to evoke fear and hatred for sharks. In fact, it was a missed opportunity for a positive story demonstrating how sharks don't necessarily target and attack people, this was a simple entanglement accident, not an attack.

However, I do applaud South Africa for not reacting to this incident with kill orders and culls, like is happening in too many other parts of the world.

Why I wear pink fins

Most people assume that I wear pink fins and have pink diving accessories because, obviously,  I'm a cliche girly girl. In fact the reason is totally the opposite. I wear pink precisely because I'm not usually perceived to be a girl at all; to mark my female identity and redeem a sense of femininity in a predominantly male orientated industry. 



I'm not sure why, but the colour pink seems to be synonymous with female identity, so my using of the colour pink is an attempted reminder that I am, in fact, a girl. I have always been happier to go catch some waves or play beach sports with the guys than to lie on the beach sunbathing, but in doing so I have been accepted and treated like one of the boys, because 'most girls don't act like that.' 



I want to break down these gender barriers and stereotypes that dictate what is and isn't socially expected from girls. Working as a dive instructor I have unfortunately experienced countless sexist remarks and people's archaic views on the 'woman's place' first-hand.It used to be considered bad luck to have a woman on board a boat because they distracted the sailors from their sea duties. Thankfully we've come a long way since then and I am qualified to drive, crew and work on boats just as my male counterparts are. However it seems that some people's views have not moved with the times.


I often receive condescending comments about wearing pink fins; however I would rather accept these sweeping generalisations and assumptions of fitting a stereotype than to be forgotten as a female. What I struggle to accept though, is people assuming I will be inferior to my male colleagues; an opinion purely determined by my gender. Or people presupposing that I am just a deck hand or intern because they don't expect a girl to have a career teaching people to scuba dive. 


What frustrates me the most though is when people are surprised if I actually do a good job: I want to be seen as good at my job because I'm a girl, not despite it.



However, this gender stereotyping can even be extended to colleagues and employers. I have worked in several dive jobs where women are encouraged to work in the shop and let the men do the heavy lifting and filling of tanks. Is equality so much to ask for in first world society in the twenty-first century?




For a while I tried to suppress my female identity and fit in with the guys, in order to be treated as an equal, but to no avail. The guys I worked with used to hide or use my dive equipment 'as a joke' because I was the only girl, and so by default, the only target. I am all for a bit of fun in the workplace, but it gets tiresome when you become the target for all pranks, solely due to your gender. So I bought pink fins to embrace the fact that I am a girl, but to be respected and not targeted for being one. It seemed to work, apparently most guys don't want to be caught dead diving in bright pink fins.

Meet Kiki the nurse shark

Here in Grand Cayman we have a friendly neighbourhood nurse shark called Kiki who absolutely loves divers and often joins us on our dives.

She has the temperament of a labrador puppy and will swim right alongside divers, sometimes even brushing up against them. It is important that divers resist the urge to reach out and pet her though, however tempting it may be, as humans have all kinds of grease and bacteria on their hands which if transferred onto a shark's skin can be harmful to them.

Nurse sharks can reach up to 14 feet in length and weigh up to 750lb. Kiki however is around 5 feet long.

We know it is Kiki when we see her, not only from her behaviour but she also has a scar in her lip where she was once hooked on a fishing line.

Nurse sharks are generally a nocturnal species, however Kiki seems to be active all through the day, choosing to hang out with divers over sleep!

Planet Ocean

"The only way we can guarantee our continued survival on earth is to recognise the importance of other non human life forms and stop pretending we're on top of some pyramid of domination over other beings." - Rod Coronado

 

It is nice to feel humbled by a creature I have no control over, in an environment my species cannot tame, in a society where we determine such creatures' value by the profit they generate dead.

Porcupinefish

Porcupinefish are my favourite reef fish so I thought it was about time I dedicated a blog post to them.

Porcupinefish

Porcupinefish are fishes of the family Diodontidae, also called blowfish, ballonfish and globefish and collectively referred to as pufferfish. They are medium to large sized fish, found in temperate and tropical seas worldwide.

Balloonfish

Porcupinefish have the ability to inflate their bodies by swallowing water or air. They can increase in size almost double which reduces the range of potential predators to those with only much larger mouths. A second defense mechanism is provided by the sharp spines which radiate outwards when the fish is inflated.

Porcupinefish

Some species are poisonous, having a tetrodotoxin in their internal organs. This neurotoxin is at least 1,200 times more potent than cyanide. As a result of these three defenses, porcupinefish have few predators although adults are sometimes preyed upon by sharks and killer whales.

Scuba Diving: A deceptively easy way to die

"Scuba diving is itself a hazardous sport. To do it without any training is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with a loaded revolver." - Robert F. Burgess

As a scuba diving instructor, I spend my days teaching people how not to kill themselves underwater. However, there is only so much information I can provide- what students choose to do with it is unfortunately out of my control. 

Scuba diving is an increasingly popular recreational activity. The majority of new divers get certified so that they can explore the underwater world on their vacations. Although, despite being warned of the risks associated with scuba diving, many just see it as a fun (albeit expensive) new hobby that doesn't require any more thought or planning than a round of golf. This is exactly where problems tend to arise.

In theory; if you follow all the correct procedures, respect the ocean and obey the rules you should never have a problem: I've done over 1,000 dives without incident. However, so many divers don't seem to care about following any kind of rules, even if their lives depend on it, especially when they're on vacation. Perhaps they rationalise to themselves that the rules don't apply to them, or perhaps they did it before and got away with it. But you wouldn't jump out of a plane without checking you had a parachute, yet I see people jump into the water without checking whether their air is turned on every day.

But this isn't the only way accidents happen whilst diving. Of the numerous things that can go wrong, here are just a few:

- Decompression Sickness (the bends) 

- Lung over-expansion injury

- Nitrogen narcosis

- Running out of air

- Oxygen toxicity

- Aquatic life injury

- Equipment problems

- Entanglement

- Entrapment in overhead environments: Caves/wrecks



And all of these can potentially lead to death.


If reading this post scares you, then good. That is my aim. I want to raise awareness of the risks associated with diving to encourage divers to take more responsibility. Hopefully this will then lower the chance of them ever having a problem underwater.

So for those who assume that I have an easy job and my life is one big vacation, think again. Being responsible for people's lives underwater is no picnic, especially when divers pay little respect to the dangers associated with scuba diving.

Are you sitting comfortably? Don't. Life is short

People constantly aspire to have more; to be wealthier, own more possessions and be successful which is crazy when you think that there is someone out there aspiring to just have what you already have. There are always those better off and worse off than you. Remember that.


 I was lucky to have been born in a developed first world country, to have; not just education, food and clean water everyday, but also so many opportunities. I'm far from the wealthiest person I know, but I still have so much, I am extremely fortunate. I don't know why I was born into these circumstances and not different ones, but I do know that I definitely won't take it for granted.





I have been that girl; working two jobs, seven days a week just so i can afford to cover my costs. I was literally working to afford working. However, unlike many of my peers, I now refuse to work a job I don't like- just to make money- to carry on living a life I'm unhappy in.



So people should not aspire to materialistic goals. They should strive to improve themselves in some way; making money doesn't equate to making yourself better. Travelling changed my life. My mindset used to be all about money. It wasn't really MY mindset though, I was just a product of the society I was raised in. Aspiring to make money and orientating everything around that is just what's expected from you and is seen as being sensible and realistic.




I had myself lined up a successful career based on the hard years spent working to get my degree, but then I boarded a plane to travel the world working as a dive instructor instead. I defied the stereotypical expectations people held of me... The best decision I ever made.
I quickly came to realise that making money was most certainly not the most important thing in life, not for me anyway. Now I would gladly live out of a suitcase; sacrificing material possessions for life-altering experiences.








So, don't waste your life aspiring for things that can only be measured in materialistic success because "Life isn't about how many breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away."

Scuba diving Grand Cayman, Caribbean 2015

Ecuador seizes huge illegal shark fin haul

Police in Ecuador have seized around 200,000 sharks fins which were about to be illegally exported to Asia.

The fins - often used to make soup - were discovered after raids on nine locations in the port city of Manta.

Six people, including a Chinese national, have been arrested on charges of damaging wildlife.

Interior Minister Jose Serrano said at least 50,000 sharks had been killed by the traffickers.

He said the authorities had "dealt a major blow to an inaternational network that trafficked shark fins".

"We must end these criminal networks that are only interested in their own economic interests and are destroying the eco-system."

Shark fishing is prohibited in Ecuador and they cannot be sold unless they have been accidentally caught in fishing nets.

Read the full article here

The future is promised to no one...

The best bit of advice I can give to anyone is to find what it is that you really love doing, whatever it is, and do it as much as you possibly can. 

Everyone has a limited amount of time on this planet, so don't waste it doing something that doesn't bring you happiness.

Education is conservation

I'm sorry little boy, I don't mean to be rude, I just find it hard to talk to you when you're wearing that dolphin discovery t-shirt; advertising that your parents paid for you to swim with a wild animal being kept like a prisoner in captivity.

I know that you're too young to understand, I don't blame you, dolphins are cute and I understand why you wanted to swim with them. I blame your parents though, they know better than to let you swim with them in those conditions.I believe you should be educated on the truth behind "Dolphin Discovery" so that you'll have no desire to see dolphins in captivity.

Did you know that 23,000 dolphins are killed in Japan each year? They are killed during the process they use to catch the dolphins that you paid to swim with. By paying to go to "Dolphin Discovery", SeaWorld or anywhere else of that nature, your parents are funding this barbaric process. 

The people who run these establishments have never seen these creatures in the wild- they just see them in their pockets. They profit from the destruction of our oceans.

If you really do love dolphins then that is precisely the reason you shouldn't pay to go and see 

them in captivity. Go see them in the wild- where they belong.

Sharing the sea with sharks

In the South African coastal city where I grew up, shark incidents were fairly common out on the reef where the surfers congregated. As a boy, my father lost a friend to a shark at our local beach. He remembers how the kid who pulled his friend out the water was sent to school the next morning and expected to get on with things.

Now I live in Sydney, where I do the occasional open-water swim in a bid to confront my mild phobia of sharks. I still spend ninety-nine per cent of each swim thinking about them, which may explain my surprisingly fast race times. It doesn’t help knowing that the number of shark bites in Australia—and worldwide—has more than doubled since 1990. But that increase is not, in fact, cause for alarm. It simply reflects human population growth and higher numbers of oceangoers. Even in Australia, which has the highest number of fatal shark bites in the world, the risk of death from a shark bite is extremely low: a yearly average of 1.1 fatalities over the past twenty years. Meanwhile, we’ve been systematically killing off sharks, in spite of evidence that, as “apex predators,” they’re crucial to maintaining biodiversity. The populations of large predatory fish such as swordfish and sharks have been reduced by ninety per cent over the past century.

The notion of the “rogue shark” with a taste for human flesh that needs to be hunted down and eliminated has long been shown to be a myth. Yet the knee-jerk response of some governments to shark-bite incidents is still to hunt, trap, and kill sharks indiscriminately. Most shark scientists agree that this aggressive approach is not based on sound science, but is more often about politicians wanting to avoid being blamed for shark incidents by a public they perceive to be vengeful and panicky.

Recently, a series of fatal shark bites in Western Australian waters led to an unusual exemption for the state government from federal environmental laws protecting white sharks. In late 2013, the government was permitted to attempt a large-scale cull. The state’s Premier, Colin Barnett (dubbed “Captain Hook” by environmental activists), posed triumphantly for photographs beside a giant hook, designed to be used off state beaches. Any white, tiger, and bull sharks larger than three metres caught on one of seventy-two new drumlines—unmanned, baited hooks suspended from buoys—would be killed.

The public outcry was immediate. Thousands attended anti-drumline rallies across the country, and as far afield as London and Rome. More than three hundred marine scientists signed a public letter to the state government stating that there is “no evidence to suggest that the lethal drumline program … will improve ocean safety,” and that the government had ignored outcomes from a similar program in Hawaii that “showed no improved safety outcomes despite a lethal long-line program lasting 16 years that captured nearly 300 tiger sharks a year.” Sharon Burden, whose son died from a fatal white-shark bite, in 2011, was a leading member of the anti-cull campaign.

Sea Shepherd Australia took out a boat nicknamed Bruce to film private contractors and Fisheries Department staff as they checked the drumlines and killed target species. The footage is distressing to watch. The hook “usually went into the shark’s mouth and outside their head at the side of the mouth, then over and back into their head again,” Shayne Thomson, an ex-Fisheries Department employee turned conservationist and filmmaker, explained. “These sharks had horrific injuries. Even the ones that were released would not have survived. It was not humane.” He and other concerned observers saw many of the larger tiger sharks being shot several times, and shark species being wrongly identified or sized.

During the three-month drumline trial, a hundred and seventy-two sharks were caught (a hundred and sixty-three were tiger sharks, which have not been responsible for a fatal shark bite in the region since 1925), and sixty-seven were shot or died on the line. Of the marine animals caught on the drumlines, seventy-one per cent were classified “non-target,” such as stingrays or harmless shark species, or undersized sharks. In October, 2014, the government abandoned its drumline policy after suffering a major political embarrassment: the state’s Environmental Protection Authority recommended that the program be discontinued due to uncertainty about its “impact on the environment,” and on white-shark populations in particular. There is still, however, a controversial catch-and-kill order in place for any sharks deemed to be a “serious threat.”

“The drumline policy was designed to provide public catharsis through retribution, not public safety,” Christopher Neff, a public-policy shark expert who teaches at the University of Sydney, said. Neff grew up in New England and was a “shark kid” from an early age—he kept a huge cut-out of a white shark in his bedroom, and on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard was thrilled to ride in a cab that had been used in the movie “Jaws.” His research has shown that governments tend to respond to shark incidents by addressing public perception of the risk through “a bunch of symbolic policy responses that do nothing to address the underlying level of risk but are helpful politically.” In the past, communities have sometimes lashed out at elected representatives in the aftermath of a shark bite. After a string of now infamous shark bites in New Jersey in 1916 (which inspired the book and then movie versions of “Jaws“), for example, voters in nearby districts tended to vote against the party in power.

However, Neff believes that governments have been misreading the contemporary public’s mood and attitudes toward sharks for a while. Several surveys have shown that the vast majority of Australians no longer supports radical, lethal action after a shark bite, even a fatal one, and many don’t want shark-control programs at all. Neff said that this is true for many beachside communities around the world that share their local beaches with sharks.

Neff’s research has also highlighted the need for more accurate language to describe shark incidents. For example, he found that, in the past thirty years, thirty-eight per cent of shark “attacks” in New South Wales, where Sydney is located, resulted in no injury to a human. In 2013, Neff co-wrote an influential paper recommending a new set of categories for describing shark incidents: sightings, encounters, bites, and fatal bites. The American Elasmobranch Society (the world’s largest shark and ray science society) recently petitioned the Associated Press and Reuters to include these terms in their style guides, and I have tried to use their categories—though I was disappointed by how often I was tempted to use the more chillingly evocative term “shark attack.”

Public opposition to established shark-culling programs on the east coast of Australia is also growing, in part because of campaigns run by environmental groups like Sea Shepherd, No Shark Cull, and Support Our Sharks. Queensland, for example, has a “mixed-use” program of more than three hundred and fifty drumlines and twenty-nine shark nets, and New South Wales’s Shark Meshing Program uses fifty-one shark nets.

In 1937, when the first shark nets were installed off Sydney beaches, on Australia’s east coast, sea-bathing was still a relatively new pastime—prior to 1903, daylight ocean bathing had been banned as improper. At the time the nets were introduced, the state’s beaches were experiencing, on average, one fatal shark bite every year. The government felt that it needed to be seen as proactive, and nets were one of the least hawkish measures proposed; suggestions made during a 1935 public-submissions process included mounting machine guns on headlands and setting explosives. From the outset, the purpose of the nets was to catch and kill sharks.

Almost eighty years later, the nets are still installed off the New South Wales coast. They go in at the start of September, the beginning of the warm-weather season, and are removed at the end of April. At each of the fifty-one participating beaches, nets are installed for fourteen days of the month. They do not act as a total barrier: they are generally only a hundred and fifty metres long and six metres wide, and are set beneath the surface in ten to twelve metres of water, five hundred metres out from the shore. They’re anchored to the sea floor, but there is significant space above and below them. (A study of a similar shark-net program in South Africa found that thirty-five per cent of the catch was “on the shoreward side of the nets”—in other words, sharks are often caught on their way out to sea.)
Allyson Jennings, the New South Wales coordinator of Sea Shepherd’s anti-cull campaign, said that, since 1950, when data began to be officially recorded, the Shark Meshing Program has entangled more than sixteen thousand marine animals. In the 2013-2014 season alone, a hundred and eight animals were officially reported tangled in the nets, of which seventy-six per cent were non-target or threatened species. These include grey nurse sharks, which look fierce but are rarely aggressive toward humans, and are considered a critically endangered species; turtles; and rays. Two humpback whales have become entangled in the nets in the past two years. Mortality rates for entangled animals are high. The nets used are “gill” nets, and, as their name suggests, they have fine mesh designed to catch in the gills of large creatures and cause serious damage as the animal thrashes until it drowns. Contractors are required to check the nets every seventy-two hours, weather permitting, and to free any marine creatures still alive if “practical and safe to do so”—but Jennings said that, in reality, “nets are sometimes only checked once a week.”

These days, the New South Wales government avoids saying outright that the nets are designed to cull sharks, and instead claims that the nets “deter sharks from establishing territories.” But sharks roam across extremely large home ranges. Robert Hueter, the director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory, in Sarasota, Florida, said that there’s no evidence of territoriality in any shark species. “Sharks do not exhibit what animal behaviorists call true territorial behavior, which is occupying a specific area and defending that area,” he said. “Sharks take their territory with them as they swim.” Another eminent shark scientist joked to me that the only reason the nets deter sharks from establishing territories is because “a dead shark can’t establish anything.” Geremy Cliff, the head of research at the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board, in South Africa, which has run a shark-net program for more than sixty years, agrees that sharks aren’t territorial. However, he said that the board’s research team has observed bull sharks—which are capable of moving across large distances—sometimes spending time in a particular location, or “residence,” if conditions are favorable, and believes that the nets installed near the coastal city of Durban “took out the bull sharks that were hanging around popular swimming beaches at the time of their introduction.”

The most controversial aspect of shark-net programs is whether it has been scientifically proven that shark nets reduce shark bites. Some researchers who have worked for government shark-meshing programs over a long period wholeheartedly believe that they do. Since the start of the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board netting program—which uses much larger nets, for a longer period, than the New South Wales program—there have been “only two attacks, both non-fatal … at protected beaches … over the past three decades.” And the New South Wales government reports that since “the NSW shark meshing program was put in place in Sydney in 1937, there has only been one fatal attack on a meshed beach.”

However, the New South Wales Fisheries Scientific Committee—which is required by law to review the performance of all parties involved in the Shark Meshing Program— has for years reported its concerns about the scientific and research aspects of the program, in particular the claim that the program has been effective at providing a safer environment for swimmers. The committee believes that “this statement is unsubstantiated because it is not based on a scientific comparison between meshed and unmeshed beaches of shark numbers, interactions or attacks,” and said that it has repeatedly asked for the claim to be removed from official program reports, to no avail. But, while Cliff believes in theory that this kind of comparison would be useful, he said that, in practice, it would be very difficult to carry out. “Catches in shark nets are often the only indication we have of shark-population numbers,” he said.

Other shark scientists, however, support the committee’s criticisms. Ryan Kempster, a shark biologist at the University of Western Australia and the founder of the Support Our Sharks conservation society, told me, “It’s extremely hard to prove that such programs are successful in reducing human fatalities. This is because decreases in shark-bite incidents may simply reflect broader declines in shark populations, driving down encounter rates.” Hueter agrees. “Removing X number of sharks from a specific area does not insure that nobody is ever bitten by a shark there again,” he said.
“Shark bites fall into a very particular statistical category as rare and random events,” Neff said. “Claiming that a decline in non-fatal shark bites is due only to the presence of nets is a case of correlation without causation.” He has highlighted that sixty-three per cent of all New South Wales shark “attacks” between 1937 and 2008 occurred at meshed ocean beaches, which suggests that the nets don’t stop sharks from biting but, rather, that the bites often are no longer fatal, thanks to better on-scene medical treatment and the availability of antibiotics. He also suggests that improved water quality may have contributed to the decrease in fatal shark bites at meshed beaches over time. (Until 1970, Sydney’s abattoirs discharged offal through the sewage outfall.)

Either way, nets and drumlines are increasingly painted as crude, antiquated shark-culling tools. Shark scientists and entrepreneurs are now starting to direct their energies toward finding a technological solution that could keep both humans and sharks safe. The KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board, in response to growing opposition to shark nets, aims to come up with a “non-lethal alternative.” It has been researching electronic shark-deterrent technologies since the nineteen-nineties, based on findings that a shark’s electroreception system—clusters of nerve fibres in gel-filled canals, visible as dark pores on a shark’s head—may be sensitive to changes in electrical fields. The board recently began testing a hundred-metre cable that emits a low-frequency pulsed electronic signal designed to repel sharks.

Many innovative technologies are, somewhat ironically, coming out of Western Australia, often with a bit of help from the state government’s small pot of funding for applied research of this kind. The Shark Shield has been developed in Western Australia using KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board technology. These are individual user devices, worn on the ankle, that emit electronic pulses. Findings so far have been promising, though sharks’ response to the technology seems context-dependent. Early tests by the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board showed that there were no attacks on a static bait when the device was attached to the bait itself. More recent independent tests in different conditions showed that the Shark Shield did not stop sharks from consuming a nearby static bait, though they took longer to take it; however, when a moving seal decoy was fitted with a Shark Shield, there were no breaching attacks on the decoy. Shark Shields are being used by the U.S. Navy, Australian Navy, and Australian police, as well as by commercial shell and abalone divers, and recreational divers, kayakers and spearfishers. The company was given a grant by the Western Australian government to help fund the development of a surfboard application, to be released later this year. A surfboard manufacturer also from Western Australia has an in-built surfboard transmitter, Surfsafe, already on the market; independent product testing is underway, but no results are available yet.

Nathan Hart, a marine neuroscientist at the University of Western Australia’s School of Animal Biology and Oceans Institute, has been studying shark vision for years. His research has shown that many shark species are most likely colorblind. Some of Hart’s findings have found a commercial application in two shark-repellent wetsuit designs by a Western Australian biotech company, SAMS. One is a camouflage pattern for snorkelers and divers, designed not to scare the shark away but to introduce visual ambiguity: “You can’t see me, or you’re not quite sure what I am, and you may leave me alone,” Hart explained. The other is for surfers: a black-and-white stripe design mimicking the patterns of a pilot fish or banded sea snake, which sharks are known to avoid. “This is the ‘Yes, I’m here, but you don’t want to eat me’ approach,” he said.

There are many other related ideas still in their infancy: a playback of killer-whale screams underwater, air-bubble curtains, strobe lighting, artificial kelp forests. SAMS is also developing a sonar shark-detection device, called a Clever Buoy, with the Australian telecommunications giant Optus and Google as partners. There’s the Eco Shark Barrier, a strong but flexible modular enclosure, which is being tested in the calm waters of a Western Australian beach. People have been travelling from surrounding areas specifically to swim there since it was installed; many users say that it gives them complete peace of mind, especially when swimming at dawn or dusk. Researchers at the Center for Shark Research at Florida’s Mote Marine Laboratory are investigating a range of magnetic, chemical, and electronic shark electroreception-system stimulants. And the New South Wales government recently pledged a hundred thousand dollars to test new shark-mitigation technologies at Sydney’s beaches next summer, a sign that it’s aware that the shark-net approach might be outdated.
Most of the shark scientists I spoke to believe public education is still the best method of protecting oceangoers and marine animals, especially while a technological solution is still years off. Many cite Cape Town’s Shark Spotters program as a gold standard because of its emphasis on observation and education: community members on beachside cliffs use flags and alerts to keep the public informed of shark sightings. “As an effective approach, education is number one,” Hueter, the Florida-based shark expert, said. “Most people here have embraced the idea that this is the sharks’ home, their natural habitat, we’re going into their space. … People respond to a shark-bite incident differently now. It’s a tragedy, yes, but it’s accepted as something out of our control, like being struck by lightning.”

“We’re not just afraid of predators. We’re transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters.” These words from E. O. Wilson, the Harvard socio-biologist, could be quoted by people on both sides of the shark-cull debate. For some, the takeaway is that we need to be prepared in order to survive; for others, that we need to find better ways of expressing our love for our monsters. His words made me think of an encounter that my husband and I had with a small Galapagos shark while snorkelling on Lord Howe Island. When I saw the shark’s shape approaching underwater, I was filled with unexpected joy—we had been told that the juveniles were harmless. I spluttered to the surface to tell my husband, but he had mistaken my rapid movements for fear, and had done a slow-motion underwater clap to scare it away. Afterward, we felt ridiculous, and also bereft, aware that we had wasted a precious opportunity to gaze at this magnificent creature. We kept returning to the same spot to snorkel, but never saw another shark again.

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Latest SeaWorld lawsuit

Latest SeaWorld lawsuit demands park end 'false statements' on orca welfare 

 

Third lawsuit in three weeks is not demanding visitor refunds – instead, plaintiffs ‘want to force SeaWorld to tell the truth’ in killer whale marketing.

SeaWorld has been hit with another class action lawsuit accusing the aquatic theme park company of misleading the public when it insists its captive, performing killer whales are happy and healthy.

Unlike in two recent lawsuits, the plaintiffs in the latest legal action in California are not demanding that SeaWorld reimburse millions of visitors for the price of their tickets but that the company simply be forced to “cease making false statements” about the welfare of its giant mammals.

The environmental advocacy and research group Earth Island Institute, based in Berkeley, California, is advising the legal team representing the plaintiffs.

“We want to force SeaWorld to tell the truth,” Mark Palmer, assistant director of the Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project, told the Guardian.

Two members of the public who have visited the SeaWorld park in San Diego are the named plaintiffs: Mark Anderson and Ellexa Conway, from San Francisco.

But Palmer said the institute was the driving force behind the lawsuit and sought out the individual plaintiffs to represent the class action on behalf of members of the public.

The lawsuit demands that SeaWorld refute marketing statements that whales at its parks are thriving.

SeaWorld declined to issue a fresh statement in response to the latest lawsuit and said an earlier statement applied, which called the accusations baseless and said SeaWorld intends to defend itself “against these inaccurate claims”. The company vigorously denies the allegations in the lawsuits and points out that its parks are regularly inspected by the US government.

The institute ultimately wants SeaWorld to be compelled to cease running “a whale circus”, Palmer said, and stop captive breeding programs, instead allowing its orcas to retire to large sea pens and live out the rest of their lives being fed and tended to by SeaWorld trainers and veterinarians, he said.
“We hope the courts order SeaWorld to tell the truth about orcas in captivity,” Palmer told the Guardian.

The lawsuit, filed in California superior court in San Francisco on Tuesday, seeks a court order requiring SeaWorld “to cease making false statements about the health and welfare of the orcas and to make a factual public statement about the orcas, refuting previous false claims”.

It is the third lawsuit in three weeks involving the SeaWorld company and its three marine parks in Orlando, Florida, San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California.

Palmer said the latest action has been in the pipeline for the last nine months and was not coordinated with the other two class actions.

The lawsuit filed in Florida last week and one in California last month both seek refunds on behalf of millions of visitors, which, if successful, would cost the company billions of dollars. The plaintiffs in all three cases claim that the company misled them about what they allege are the miserable conditions endured by captive, performing orcas.

David Phillips, an expert in marine mammals at the Earth Island Institute, said: “If SeaWorld told the truth about the whales’ shortened and stressful lives in concrete tanks, and severe depression and boredom from sterile living conditions, no one would ever go there. Would people bring their children to SeaWorld if they knew the cruelty behind the orca whale circus show? We think not.”
SeaWorld has vociferously denied all the claims in the previous two lawsuits.

The Earth Island Institute is advising the law firm Covington & Burling, which filed the latest lawsuit in San Francisco on behalf of the plaintiffs.

“SeaWorld is violating California consumer protection laws and engaging in unfair business practices,” said Christine Haskett, a partner with the law firm.
SeaWorld has been contacted for comment.

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