Scientists Discover 400-Year-Old Greenland Shark Likely Born Around 1620

Greenland sharks are now the longest-living vertebrates known on Earth, according to scientists.

Researchers used radiocarbon dating of eye proteins to determine the ages of 28 Greenland sharks, and estimated that one female was about 400 years old. The former vertebrate record-holder was a bowhead whale estimated to be 211 years old.

To read more on this story, click here: Scientists Discover 400-Year-Old Greenland Shark Likely Born Around 1620

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Scuba Diver’s Strange Encounter With Seal Pup Goes Viral

This Encounter Captured Millions Of Hearts
When a videographer unexpectedly encountered a group of seal pups while scuba diving in the sea, their behavior completely took him by surprise. 55-year-old Gary Grayson loves nothing more than taking a walk (or a swim) on the wild side. However, when he ended up bumping into a seal just off the south coast of England, nothing could prepare him for the response he would receive after posting a video of the strange encounter online…

To read more on this story, click here: Scuba Diver’s Strange Encounter With Seal Pup Goes Viral


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Shark Experts Say the Coast of Florida Is Starting to Heat Up with White Shark Activity

Key West, Florida - Great white sharks are moving to Florida for the winter. A research group, OCEARCH, says the annual migration to warmer waters off the Florida and Carolinas coasts is underway. 

The Palm Beach Post reports that eight white sharks tagged by the Utah-based research group were spotted from New Jersey to Florida in the last week.

Three other sharks that had been tagged were detected Wednesday in waters on North Carolina beaches, and two more sharks —Helena and the 2,076-pound Unama’ki —made their presence known with toothy grins just west of Key West in September.

Unama’ki had been tagged off Nova Scotia in September. She’s a big girl —some 15-feet, 5-inches.

It’s not unusual for great whites to call southern waters home during winter and sightings are common near popular fishing and diving spots in Florida through spring.

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Meet Unama'ki, the 2,000-Pound Great White Shark Who Reached the Keys

A massive great white shark that weighs over 2,000 pounds made its way from Nova Scotia, where it was tagged, down to the Florida Keys in just over a month.

According to OCEARCH, a nonprofit research organization that tags sharks to keep track of their movement and activity, the 15-foot-5-inch adult female "pinged" just off the coast of Key West on Saturday morning.

She's been named Unama'ki, a term meaning "land of the fog" in the language of the indigenous Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia.

OCEARCH stated on its website that it hopes Unama'ki will lead them to the site where she gives birth, exposing a new white shark nursery.

To read more on this story, click here: Meet Unama'ki, the 2,000-Pound Great White Shark Who Reached the Keys

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Scientists Discover 512 Y.O. Shark, Which Makes It The Oldest Living Vertebrate On The Planet

Can there really be a living creature that’s over five centuries old? It may seem impossible, but scientists have discovered one such beast living in the Northern Atlantic Ocean: a Greenland Shark.

It’s long been known that this particular shark is older than most, but scientists had no idea just how old he was until recently. Now that they’ve pinpointed his age to be 512 years old, he’s claimed the title of world’s oldest living vertebrate.

To read more on this story, click here: Scientists Discover 512 Y.O. Shark, Which Makes It The Oldest Living Vertebrate On The Planet


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10 Extremely Super Big Animals

You wont believe the size of these animals. The most gigantic animals Earth has ever seen.



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Have You Seen the Remote Control Fish And Shark? These Are Toys, But They Are For Ages 6 - 99! Everyone Will Love Them

The William Mark Corp. booth, known for a wide variety of toys that can be launched, flown or thrown, was turning heads at New York Toy Fair. They demoed their new Air Swimmers in the middle of the expo hall. If you weren’t paying attention, you may have thought you’d stepped into an aquarium.

They actually float through the air with a very fish-like motion that you just have to see to believe.

The technology behind them is fairly simple. Each Air Swimmer is a refillable helium balloon that receives commands from an infrared remote. The user’s input via this remote controls both a tail motor and an adjustable weight. The tail fin motor can vary its flapping rate and range of motion to control both speed and left-right direction, while the adjustable weight uses a motor to slide along the length of the Air Swimmer’s underside, thereby controlling tilt. Using the relatively low-tech infrared remote that requires a line-of-sight connection allows the Air Swimmers to retail for about $39.99. All you need to do is provide a helium fill-up and fresh AAA batteries prior to use.

Warning: If you show these videos to your kids…they will be on their Christmas list!




 





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A 16-Inch-Long Horn Shark Was Stolen from the San Antonio Aquarium in Texas

Miss Helen, a 16-inch-long horn shark in the San Antonio Aquarium in Texas, lives in a tank where visitors are encouraged to touch the animals. Three people took the encouragement too far this past weekend, lifting the shark out of the tank and plopping her into a baby stroller, the police said.

The trio of sharknappers — Ocean’s Three? — can be seen on surveillance video using their own net to capture Miss Helen on Saturday, removing her from the 76-degree water after staking out the pool for more than an hour, the aquarium said in a statement. She was placed into 52-degree water to make her voyage — a shock to the system that her handlers feared would quickly kill her.

But Miss Helen, who’s less than a year old, proved her resilience, from her snout to her caudal fin. And the thieves, if bad at covering their tracks, turned out to be good at taking care of sharks.

If aquarium employees are correct in their suspicions, the thieves were also skilled at reconnaissance. An official said she recognized one of them from a month earlier, when he said he worked for the facility’s salt supplier and got an all-access tour.

On Saturday, just after Miss Helen’s disappearance, an aquarium manager caught up to the trio in the parking lot. They refused to allow an inspection of their truck or the baby stroller and drove off, said Ammon Covino, the aquarium’s chief operating officer.

No matter. Surveillance footage recorded the license plate number, and an image of the getaway truck was all over local media. Tips poured in to the police, who tracked down the truck Monday morning, according to Joseph Salvaggio, chief of the Leon Valley Police Department.

The police arrived at a home near where the car was found and were preparing a warrant when a man arrived and let the officers into the home, Chief Salvaggio said.

They quickly found Miss Helen. It was hard to miss the giant pool inside the house, filled with sharks and other marine animals.

Click on video below.

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Spring Breakers Are Abusing Sea Creatures To Get Drunk

There’s nothing funny about these images.

Spring break is a time for college students to go out, get wild and indulge in a bit of alcohol-fueled hijinks. But some drunkards are spoiling the fun for everyone and harming wild animals in the process.

This year, Total Frat Move, a blog about college life, launched an Instagram account dedicated solely to spring break. Buried in between photos of beer bongs, boobs and more beer are videos that show straight-up animal abuse.

Take this clip titled “The shark shotgun,” which shows a guy using a beached shark to open his can of beer:

To read more on this story, click here: Spring Breakers Are Abusing Sea Creatures To Get Drunk


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Wildlife Officials Are Trying to FIgure Out How a Shark Got into Swimming Pool at a South Florida Condo Complex

Wildlife officials are trying to figure out exactly how a shark got into the swimming pool at a South Florida condo complex.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reports that Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers responded to the Mariner's Cay condominium in Hypoluxo last week after a woman found a live five-foot blacktip shark in the pool.

The woman told officers she saw two young men running from the pool, which is located near the shoreline of the Intracoastal Waterway. The officers removed the shark from the pool and returned it to the ocean.

Blacktip sharks are among the most common species in coastal South Florida.

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Experts Say This Summer is Brewing up Something of a Perfect Storm for Shark Attacks

More than half a dozen shark attacks have happened in North Carolina in the last three weeks, nearly as many as happened all of last year.

Experts say this summer is brewing up something of a perfect storm for the attacks. But while they seem like they're everywhere, shark populations are actually dwindling.

And the real reason there have been so many attacks likely isn't because there are more sharks in the water — it's because there are more people swimming in it than ever before.

  

Shark expert George Burgess of the International Shark Attack File explained the trend in a recent NPR interview:

Shark populations in the US and around the world are at perhaps all-time lows. On the other hand, the human population continues to rise every year. We have no curbing of that.

And fundamentally [a] shark attack ... is driven by the number of humans in the water more than the number of sharks, and when areas such as the Carolinas become popular tourist destinations, as they have, there's [sic] more people entering the water. You're going to end up having more shark bites.

  

While a number of studies in recent decades have suggested that shark populations around the world are all declining sharply, it's hard for scientists to get exact numbers on them.

  

Nevertheless, by comparing recent population numbers with past data, we can get a general estimate of how sharks are doing across the globe, marine biologist and University of Miami graduate student David Shiffman explains in a recent post on his blog.

 One frequently-cited survey of data published in 2003 from fisheries gathered between 1986 and 2000 suggests that shark populations are in deep trouble.

  

The data from that survey found that hammerhead populations were declining by an average of 89%; great whites by 79%; tiger sharks by 65%, thresher sharks by 80%, blue sharks by 60%, and mako sharks by 70%:

(Science/"Collapse and Conservation of Shark Populations in the Northwest Atlantic") Declines in estimated relative abundance for coastal shark species: (A) hammerhead, (B) white, (C) tiger, and (D) coastal shark species; and oceanic shark species: (E) thresher, (F) blue, (G) mako, and (H) oceanic whitetip.

"We may never know exactly how many sharks are out there, or exactly how many are killed each year. What we do know, from a variety of different types of analysis, is that many species of sharks are decreasing in population at alarming rates," writes Shiffman.

Why are sharks in trouble?

While vigilante shark hunters can do significant damage to local shark populations, the real problem centers around two main activities: Hunting sharks for their meat and fins and irresponsible fishing practices. Each year, thousands of sharks are caught and trapped in fishing nets and other fishing gear.

And while it might seem like good news that there are fewer sharks around, it's actually a very big problem for the rest of us.

In many places, sharks are apex predators, meaning they occupy the spot right at the top of the food chain. If their populations aren't healthy and stable, it throws all of the other life in the oceans out ofbalance.

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Plus, sharks have a bunch of characteristics that make them especially vulnerable to exploitation http://www.seethewild.org/shark-threats/, including the fact that they live long lives, mature late in life, and have very few young.

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Ocean City, Maryland: Hammerhead Shark Spotted Near the Beach

A Photographer was taking wedding photos Wednesday near 36th Street in Ocean City when he heard yelling coming from a few blocks away.

"You could just see a pretty big fin," he said.

It happened shortly after 5 p.m., when lifeguards are off duty, but Denny said within 10 minutes guards responded to the area and the water was cleared. The Ocean City Beach Patrol became aware of the shark at that time and was able to identify it as a hammerhead, Captain Butch Arbin said Thursday.

"Yesterday we had something come into the surf — and that can really be anything when we first see it, like it can be a whale carcass, a turtle, a log, or in this case, a shark — so we moved people away from the area and are monitoring it at this time," Arbin said.

The Beach Patrol is still monitoring the area between 22nd and 52nd streets.

"We don't want people infringing on the marine mammal, and we don't want it to hurt anyone, either," Arbin said. "It sounds funny but, to us, this is normal procedure for anything that enters the surf zone that usually isn't there."

Arbin said the shark's activities were unusual because it entered and left the surf zone twice.

"We're not sure if it tried to beach itself, but it stayed in the surf zone 'til dark last night," Arbin said.

If the shark beaches itself, the patrol would notify personnel with the National Aquarium and the Department of Natural Resources, who they have already been in contact with.

Denny is also a surf instructor, and he said it's not unusual for him to see smaller sand sharks along the coast. But seeing what he called a large hammerhead close to the shore in about 2 feet of water was surprising he said.

"It's pretty rare," he said.

According the Denny, more than 100 people gathered to watch the shark Wednesday.

This sighting comes two days after a dead hammerhead washed ashore in Fenwick Island, and three days after another hammerhead gave birth while beached in Ocean City. It is unclear if those events are related, because the shark was buried but not examined.

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Remarkable Wildlife Encounter: Bobcat Emerges from Surf with Shark in its Jaws

Fort Pierce, Florida- A man said he captured a remarkable wildlife encounter Monday: a bobcat emerging from the surf near Sebastian Inlet with a shark in its jaws.

But the photo that made the evening news before spiraling onto the Internet inevitably raised questions over its authenticity.

“I can appreciate that,” said John Bailey, a Fort Pierce sales rep who said he initially thought he’d walked up on a dog in the surf as he was strolling down the beach between 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. Monday. Bailey said he watched the bobcat wade through the water, then pounce and stride out of the water with the shark in its mouth.

Using his iPhone, he said he was able to snap one quick picture before the bobcat dropped the shark and took off for nearby brush. The entire encounter lasted just seconds, he said.

Florida wildlife officials who looked at the picture said they had no reason to suspect it was fake. But in several Internet postings, people asked: Real or Photoshop? And long shadows also raise questions.

Bailey, in a phone interview with the Miami Herald, said he couldn’t remember exactly where he was in Sebastian Inlet State Park, an area just north of Vero Beach with a long ocean-side sandy beach. The angle of the strong shadows suggest that for the picture to have been shot in the evening at sunset, the bobcat would have to have been on the western, Indian River side of the park. But that inland area has only a few patches of sandy beach along the inlet and the river. Bailey said he couldn’t recall if he was walking north or south, just that the beach was on his left.

“Had I realized I was going to stumble onto something like that, I probably would have been aware of my surroundings,’’ he said. Bailey said he had gone to the beach “just to clear my head.”

Bobcats, the closest relative of the Florida panther but far smaller and with a namesake bobbed tail, have been spotted near area beaches in the past. But the normally shy felines typically move about at night and are notoriously elusive. They don’t fear water, unlike some wild cats, and have been known to take a dip in search of food. They typically eat small mammals like rats and rabbits, but wildlife biologist Robert King said increasing development in the area may have driven out prey, forcing the cats to expand their menu.

“Would they go into the surf and pull out a shark? Darn right they would,” said King, who studied bobcats in the Everglades in the 1980s. “Unless it’s been photo-shopped, I believe it.”

Bailey said he never imagined the shot would turn into Internet fodder.

“It’s kind of been a shock,” he said. “I didn’t think it was that rare, but I guess it is.”

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Deep Sea Vessel Spots Ghost Shark (Video)

The deep-sea exploration vessel Nautilus has stumbled upon and recorded a number of very interesting sea creatures thus far.

The team was recently exploring the Kick ‘em Jenny submarine volcano near Grenada when they spotted something slowly moving through the water.


To read more on this story, click here: Deep Sea Vessel Spots Ghost Shark










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Shark Vs Shark: Giant Great White Attacks Another Great White

A vicious great white shark bursts from the water to rip into another shark.

The sensational moment was caught on camera by Adam Malski, 33, as the fish proved why it has the reputation of the ocean’s most fearsome predator.

The 4.8m shark, named ‘Gilbert’attacked the rival fish 50 miles from Australia’s shore. The larger animal survived the encounter but the smaller shark has not been sighted since.  Isn’t this incredible?

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