Jaws
dr. dolittle | October 2, 2012While Dr. Barbara Block's team from Stanford University is tagging and tracking sharks in the Northern Pacific (see prior blog), Chris Fischer and his team from History Channel's Shark Wranglers are tracking great white sharks off the coast of Cape Cod...home of "Jaws." You can track these sharks by visiting Ocearch.org.
A great white shark named "Genie" being outfitted with a GPS tracker off the coast of Cape Cod. Image taken by Gretchen Ertl, NY Times.
The goal of this research is to gather data to help protect the animals by learning more about their breeding and migratory habits.…
illconsidered | January 5, 2011Check out an hilarious post from Denial Depot where he applies a keen sense of climate skepticism to the movie Jaws. Here is his synopsis, to whet your appetite:
A group of so-called government funded "experts" whip up alarmist fears of a killer shark off the coast of Amity, a sea side town. Their goal is to destroy the local tourist industry, send Amity back to the dark ages and thus achieve their underlying socialist agenda of wealth redistribution. The heroes of this tale are the local major and business leaders who lead a successful audit of the alarmist claims and by doing so manage to…
laelaps | May 11, 2010
The jaws of C. megalodon as restored by Bashford Dean for the AMNH in 1909. Image from the American Museum Journal.
My early elementary reading school choices often got me into trouble. Every week I would pass over the recommended, grade-appropriate sections for the few shelves containing the books about dinosaurs, sharks, and alligators - if it was big and hard sharp teeth, I wanted to learn about it. The school librarian was not too pleased with this, even calling my parents in on one occasion to insist that I read something fit for younger children, but I just could not get enough of…
laelaps | February 22, 2010
A restoration of the giant, durophagous shark Ptychodus, courtesy paleo-artist Matt Celeskey.
The study of prehistoric sharks is no easy task. Specialists in other branches of vertebrate paleontology at least have the reasonable hope of discovering complete skeletons of their subjects; except in instances of exceptional preservation the scientists who study sharks typically only have teeth and a few vertebrae to work with. Still, you can tell a lot about a shark by its teeth, and a new study published in Cretaceous Research suggests that one peculiar form was a shell-crushing giant.…
edyong | August 10, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
In the Alien movies, the eponymous monster killed shipmates and marines with a fearsome set of double jaws. That may have been science fiction but science fact isn't too far off. In our planet's tropical oceans, moray eels use a ballistic set of second jaws to catch their prey.
These 'pharyngeal jaws' are housed in the eel's throat. When the main jaws close on an unlucky fish, the second set launches forward into the mouth, snags the prey with terrifying, backward-pointing teeth and drags it back into…
laelaps | November 3, 2007
During the 1990's I can scarcely remember a time when one television station or another wasn't playing at least one of the four JAWS movies, TBS, TNT, or WPIX often devoting an entire day to films about killer oceanic creatures. Still, of the four films JAWS 3 (or 3-D, if you like) was one of the b-movies that was always making the rounds, and it's gratuitous special effects make it an easy target for this week's cheesy movie selection.
Although I didn't realize it as a kid, JAWS 3 picks up the story of the Brody family at a Sea World theme park (Sea World Orlando, a landlocked theme park,…
zooillogix | June 15, 2007Ever wonder where sea creatures have been or where they're headed? Thanks to marvelous modern technology and an ambitious team of prestigious scientific organizations, now you can watch in almost real-time! Since 2002, Tagging of Pacific Pelagic (TOPPS) research project has tagged over 2,000 animals with tiny microprocessors and sophisticated remote sensing systems to track exactly where, when and how deep they're traveling through the ocean.
Movements of twelve tagged salmon sharks over the last 60 days.
The results are fantastic maps showing up-to-the-minute movements of mako sharks…