Dive boat operators face charges of illegally feeding sharks in state waters

[The Chairman]

Call me when they pick the locks. Relying on brute force does not an Einstein make.

 

[boulderjohn]

Sorry John, until you can show a shark balancing a ball on it's snout, they aren't really trainable in the traditional sense of the word.

Most of of what you cited is overly sensationalistic. The pseudo scientists know they have to wow us with their insight and revelations in order to retain our interest. I'm inured to their shocks, wary of their discoveries and down right resentful of their approach. How about some real scientific studies showing us a shark solving a real problem. They have incredible vids of Octopi doing just that: why not a shark?

That's right. Pseudoscientists from major universities cited in the Smithsonian magazine, National Geographic, etc.

Maybe you should try reading some of the articles and find out why it is hard to film shark behavior in the wild, as compared to octopus behavior in a little aquarium.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Sorry John, until you can show a shark balancing a ball on it's snout, they aren't really trainable in the traditional sense of the word.

Most of of what you cited is overly sensationalistic. The pseudo scientists know they have to wow us with their insight and revelations in order to retain our interest. I'm inured to their shocks, wary of their discoveries and down right resentful of their approach. How about some real scientific studies showing us a shark solving a real problem. They have incredible vids of Octopi doing just that: why not a shark?

I would hardly call Leonard Compagno and Sonny Gruber "pseudo scientists" - those are two of the Grand Old Men of the field. Dr. Compagno is probably the leading shark taxonomist in the world; he's quite literally written the book on how to tell one species from another, right down to the ones you need to dissect and count the number of vertebrae to differentiate. I had the privilege of taking a short field course with Dr. Gruber out in Bimini about nine years ago, and he's responsible for much of what we know about lemon shark biology and behavior.

One of the more interesting shark research programs out there is the one in the Farallones; they were able to visually ID and monitor individual sharks for years at a time. The researchers on that program definitely made note of the sharks' varying behaviors and personalities. They also noted that when the cage-diving charters started using surfboard decoys on a frequent basis, the white sharks wised up and stopped hitting the camera-equipped ones the researchers used on an occasional basis. Granted, lamnids like whites and makos seem a bit brighter than average for sharks, but you can teach lemon and nurse sharks to ring a bell for food and run a maze. Lemon shark pups have been observed to engage in cooperative learning.

Is it creative problem solving? Perhaps not. They can learn from experience and then retain that knowledge, and show behaviors that can be ascribed to curiosity. Comparing them to octopuses (or octopodes, if one wishes to use the overly formal but linguistically correct Greek plural ) is setting a high bar. I've worked with giant Pacific octopuses and I'm convinced that if they weren't limited to a 3-5 year lifespan we hairless beach apes would probably not be so smugly in charge of the world. Dolphins might be stupid compared to them. One of ours started undoing the bolts on the divider between his part of the tank and the breeding female in the other section. In the past the aquarium also had its share of escapees and saboteurs (my favorite story being the one that got pissed off by the night spotlights on the ceiling and shot them out with his siphon).

 

[danvolker]

Call me when they pick the locks. Relying on brute force does not an Einstein make.

If you woke up tomorrow and found you were suddenly a 12 foot bull shark, how about explaining a few of the ways you would SHOW US, how intelligent you are....You don't have hands and opposable thumbs ...you don't even have the tentacles of the octopus....you have lots of power, speed, some powerful jaws....and you are an awesome hunter......maybe what you would do is to try and show how much better you could hunt than any other shark.....but beyond that, even with a big brain, how do you show a human how smart you are?

 

[The Chairman]

I would hardly call Leonard Compagno and Sonny Gruber "pseudo scientists" - those are two of the Grand Old Men of the field. Dr. Compagno is probably the leading shark taxonomist in the world;

I'm sure a lot of the "showmanship" is directly attributable to the non-scientists who direct and edit the programs. I'm just tired of the feeling that I'm being conned by these shows that put ratings ahead of science. When I worked in the field with scientists for IFAS and UF's College of Chemistry, jumping to conclusions without hard data was actively discouraged. Oh hell, we had our showmen even then. I remember taking Chemistry from the infamous and arrogant Dr John Baxter. He started to develop the overly hyped conclusion and the pregnant pause even then in an attempt to make Chemistry exciting. Color me jaundiced.

 

[T.C.]

If you woke up tomorrow and found you were suddenly a 12 foot bull shark....,how do you show a human how smart you are?

Maybe the same way that a Wild Dolphin demonstrates it's intelligence?

Just to refresh my memory, how many unprovoked wild dolphin attacks have there been?

 

[danvolker]

Maybe the same way that a Wild Dolphin demonstrates it's intelligence?

Hey, you were not supposed to help Pete with this.....

But the point is, Intelligence is "different" when the goals are ENTIRELY different....
No one here has said that Sharks are as smart as people or dolphins....but there is mounting evidence they may be a smart as some dogs...even smarter than some dogs.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I'm sure a lot of the "showmanship" is directly attributable to the non-scientists who direct and edit the programs. I'm just tired of the feeling that I'm being conned by these shows that put ratings ahead of science. When I worked in the field with scientists for IFAS and UF's College of Chemistry, jumping to conclusions without hard data was actively discouraged. Oh hell, we had our showmen even then. I remember taking Chemistry from the infamous and arrogant Dr John Baxter. He started to develop the overly hyped conclusion and the pregnant pause even then in an attempt to make Chemistry exciting. Color me jaundiced.

Actually, the examples I was citing were from either peer-reviewed research publications or direct quotes from the researchers. I wouldn't touch anything in a Shark Week program. Most of the shark biologists I know are acidly critical of wildlife programming these days. Basically networks like Discovery don't want to take the time, effort, and money to go out in the field and collect the footage. It used to be you could spend a year or two getting the shots you needed. Now the networks want to churn things out on the cheap, so they either produce shows that require a minimum of field time and feature mostly talking heads, rely on easy "canned" encounters, or piggyback off of networks that will put in the time and effort, such as BBC and NHK.

Are some of the "experts" overblown hacks? Certainly. Erich Ritter wasn't well-respected even before he got chomped by a bull shark in an incident that makes Randy's dives look safe. The fact that he and Discovery made an hour-long prime-time craptacle out of it didn't help matters. There are probably a few other names I can name, but it's fairly easy to weed out the wheat from the chaff there. Generally they're the folks with solid publication records, good standing at major research universities, and who are headlining the annual American Elasmobranch Society meetings. One of those guys was on my thesis committee, and his mantra that got drilled into us during paper-review seminars was "I want to see some blood!" - as in "take this research publication by a PhD with tenure and rip its methods, analyses, and conclusions to shreds."

As far as the theatrics ... hey, I taught science labs in grad school, some of which were 90% composed of non-biology majors. You bet I pulled out some theatrics to keep them engaged for a few hours at a stretch, although more often it was paraphrasing from movies ("There are two kinds of people in this world - those with advanced degrees in marine science, and those who dig. You dig.") and making sure the squeamish kids got the fish specimens that had the biggest, nastiest parasitic isopods on them :devious:

 

[The Chairman]

Hey, you were not supposed to help Pete with this.....

It's good to the "Pope" of ScubaBoard.

Actually, the examples I was citing were from either peer-reviewed research publications or direct quotes from the researchers.

My skirt wasn't blown up by any of what you cited. Sorry.

 

[wspalding]

Honestly Netdoc, based on how I've read your responses, until a shark invites you over for a beer and some conversation, I'm not convinced that you'll consider any evidence contrary to your beliefs as being reliable. As a scientist myself, I have to challenge myself to always accept that what I believe to be true is likely wrong until I generate enough evidence to change my views. Here is an abstract from another recent publication that challenges your position. I'm not going to buy the paper, but I suggest you remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (although in this case there does appear to be evidence that refutes your position).

The role of learning in shark behaviour

1. Tristan L Guttridge¹,
2. Arthur A Myrberg^2,†,
3. Ila F Porcher³,
4. David W Sims^4,5 and
5. Jens Krause¹

Author Information

1. Institute for Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, L.C. Miall Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
2. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149, USA
3. B.P. 4206, 98713 Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
4. Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth PL1 2PB, UK
5. School of Biological Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK

Article first published online: 10 SEP 2009

Fish and Fisheries

Volume 10, Issue 4, pages 450–469, December 2009

Keywords:

• Behaviour;
• ecotourism;
• elasmobranch;
• foraging;
• navigation;
• predator

Abstract

The role of learning in behaviour is well known for many animal taxa, including teleost fishes, insects, birds and mammals. However, its importance to sharks in everyday behavioural processes has rarely been considered. Almost 50 years ago the first learning experiments on sharks were conducted; our first section discusses these studies and places them in a framework of associative and non-associative learning. These experiments showed that sharks were capable of different forms of learning, such as operant and classical conditioning and habituation. Sharks could learn associations as rapidly as other vertebrates and also remember training regimes for several months. However, much of this experimental evidence was based on small sample sizes and few shark orders, such as Carcharhiniformes and Orectobliformes, leaving large gaps in our knowledge of the general learning capabilities of other shark orders. We also examine recent research that has tested for, or inferred learning in behavioural processes. This section reveals that sharks, like teleost fishes use learning to improve prey search and capture to potentially navigate and orientate in their home range and recognize conspecifics, heterospecifics and mates. Learning is also discussed in relation to ecotourism and fisheries. Findings indicated that these activities may lead to conditioning of sharks and that considerable effort should go into investigating what impact this could have on the shark species involved. Finally, we discuss the importance of combining laboratory experiments with field studies, the use of new experimental techniques, the role of model species and research priorities for future work.

Here is another abstract, you can get the paper online.

[h=1]Spatial learning and memory retention in the grey bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium griseum)[/h]

• Vera Schluessel^, ,
• Horst Bleckmann

Show more


http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2012.05.001Get rights and content

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[h=2]Abstract[/h]Like other vertebrates, fish can learn to solve a wide variety of tasks; however, many of their cognitive abilities, particularly in cartilaginous fishes, still remain unknown. This study investigated memory retention capabilities of spatial learning tasks in the grey bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium griseum, n = 8) after behavioural training in a two-choice experiment (T-maze). Sharks learned to obtain food at a goal location, either by performing a specific turn response or by using a variety of external landmarks for guidance. Following successful training, sharks were subjected to several training breaks ranging from one to six weeks, after which they were tested again for memory retention capabilities. Sharks successfully mastered the spatial tasks after 5–21 sessions and retained this knowledge in the absence of reinforcement for a period of up to six weeks. This is the first study to show that sharks, like stingrays and other vertebrates, can solve spatial tasks and retain spatial knowledge for an extended period of time, possibly aiding them in activities such as food retrieval, predator avoidance, mate choice and habitat selection.

[h=2]Keywords[/h]

• Cognition;
• Memory retention;
• Elasmobranch;
• Behaviour;
• Orientation