Animals
S


Attention

Fourth shark attack in a fortnight reported in North Carolina


The Guardian
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 19:18 UTC
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© Chuck Burton/AP Children walk with their skim boards on the beach in Oak Island, North Carolina, last Monday.
An eight-year-old boy suffered minor injuries after being bitten by a shark on Wednesday while swimming in knee-deep water in Surf City, North Carolina.

Town manager Larry Bergman says the town does not plan to warn visitors about the shark bite or tell swimmers to get out of the water, but it has increased police beach patrols.

The Surf City incident is the fourth shark bite in shallow water off a North Carolina beach in the past two weeks.

"It really comes down to a joint decision on public safety officials, including myself," Bergman said. He said he would have decided to close the beaches "if there was a big hazard, if there was an imminent danger".

The town does not have an official lifeguarding staff, instead employing police officers and water-rescue-trained firefighters to patrol the beaches on four-wheelers. Beachgoers swim "kind of at their own risk", Bergman said.

He said some people have approached police officers after hearing about the bite on social media.

"News travels really fast," he said.
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Bizarro Earth

Overfishing, warm ocean force nesting seabirds to abandon Gulf of California


Phys.org
Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00 UTC
tern nesting colony
A partial view of healthy Elegant Tern nesting colony in Isla Rasa, in the Midriff Island Region of the Gulf of California in 2011. Credit: E. Velarde.
Isla Rasa, in the Gulf of California, is renowned for its massive aggregations of nesting seabirds. Over 95 percent of the world populations of Elegant Terns and Heerman's Gulls concentrate unfailingly every year on this tiny island to nest. Ever since the phenomenon was described by L. W. Walker in 1953 the island has been a magnet for tourists, naturalists, filmmakers, and seabird researchers.

During some years in the last two decades, however, the seabirds have arrived to the island in April, as they usually do, but leave soon after without nesting. The first event was the 1998 "El Niño", when oceanic productivity collapsed all along the eastern Pacific coast from Chile to California. But then colony desertion happened again in 2003, and since then it has recurred with increasing frequency in 2009, 2010, 2014, and 2015. Researchers and conservationists were asking themselves where are the birds going when they leave their ancestral nesting ground, and what is causing the abandonment of their historic nesting site.

Comment: What the researchers don't mention is that the oceans may be warming due to undersea volcanoes:

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Fish

Hammerhead shark washes up on beach in Ocean City, Maryland

Kara O'Neill
Daily Mirror, UK
Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:36 UTC
Image
Hammerhead shark beaches itself.
A hammerhead shark caused panic earlier this week after it washed up on a beach full of tourists.

The eight-foot long animal was spotted by terrified swimmers, who were attempting to enjoy a sunny afternoon out on Ocean City's Atlantic Coast in Maryland.

In the clip, the shark is seen thrashing around in the shallow waters, as lifeguards frantically blow their whistles in an attempt to clear curious tourists away from the area.

The shark was surrounded by boats of people snapping pictures and recording videos when Maryland Natural Police arrived, according to local news site Delmarva Now.

Candy Thomson, a spokesperson for Maryland Natural Resources Police, told local media: "All the jetskis, and all the boats were causing it distress and disorienting it."

"People weren't maliciously trying to harm the shark. The shark is a beautiful animal, so seldom do people see a shark that close, but you've got to give those animals space."

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Wolf

Infant attacked by family dog in San Francisco


kron4.com
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 18:04 UTC
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An 8-month-old baby is being treated for injuries after a dog attack this morning in San Francisco's North of the Panhandle neighborhood.

The attack happened around 8 a.m. in the 800 block of Masonic Avenue, according to a fire spokeswoman. The dog belonged to the family, according to police spokesperson Albie Esparza.

The baby was bitten on the head of face, but the injures aren't considered life-threatening.

The dog, a mastiff mix, is being quarantined for 10 days, as is standard procedure after a dog bite, Esparza said.

He said the department's vicious and dangerous dog unit was notified of the incident, as were Child Protective Services and San Francisco Animal Care and Control.

It is unclear what provoked the attack.
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Attention

40-foot blue whale dies on shore near Mumbai, India


MiD DAY
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 17:54 UTC
Image
Locals gather to catach a glimpse of the blue whale.
A 40-feet dead whale washed ashore near the coast of Revas in Raigad district in Maharashtra. Forest department officials claim that the whale may have got stranded in shallow water and later died; the carcass was later buried near the coast.

Another dead whale was found at the Uran coast around two months ago. Several marine creatures including dolphins have been found dead around the Mumbai coast in the recent past.

The female Blue Whale, the world's largest animal, washed up on the beach on Wednesday morning and despite efforts to move the 20-tonne marine mammal by locals and authorities, the whale died ashore around on Thursday morning.

Recently, blue whales were spotted by researchers along the Sindhudurg coast of Maharashtra in the first such sighting in 100 years.

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Local fishermen and bystanders crowd around the blue whale.
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Attention

Woman and dog injured by black bear near Chico, California

Steve Schoonover
Contra Costa Times
Wed, 24 Jun 2015 19:04 UTC
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Black bear
A woman and her dog were injured when they were attacked by a bear Monday night outside a home near Chico, in Butte County.

At about 11:30 p.m. Monday a woman who lives in Magalia heard a noise in her yard and her dog began barking. She let the dog out, heard sounds of a fight and stepped out herself.

According to California Department of Fish and Wildlife Capt. Patrick Foy, she said a bear immediately came out from beneath a blue tarp, clawed her on the shoulder and bit her before running off.

The woman was taken to the hospital and treated for non-life-threatening wounds and given rabies treatment. The dog, a 9-year-old golden retriever, was taken to a veterinarian, and is in tough shape, according to Foy. "Sounds like he fought hardily," Foy said of the dog.

Fish and Wildlife are deploying a trap to the area to try and capture the offending bear. Foy said it should be in place by the end of the day.
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Attention

Basking shark caught near Australia for the first time in 85 years

Leesa Smith and John Carney
Daily Mail Australia
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:01 UTC
Image
It took a crane to lite the shark out of the boat and another five hours to cut into small enough pieces to carry
The uncommon discovery of a peculiar-looking shark is the first sighting of the second largest living fish in Australian waters for 85 years.

James Owen and his crew accidentally caught the 6.3-metre basking shark in their trawler at Portland, west of Warrnambool, in Victoria on Sunday but instead of selling the sought-after Chinese delicacy, they decided to donate the rare three-tonne male fish to science.

Only smaller than the whale shark, the mammoth fish has an unusual pink/purple hue to its skin and a huge flat nose.

The last recording of this species being captured was in the 1930s by a skipper at Lakes Entrance in eastern Victoria.

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Fish

Fish-killing virus sweeps Europe

Tim Sandle
Digital Journal
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 20:17 UTC
Carp
© Creative CommonsRed koi abound at the pond of a shopping area of downtown Shanghai.
Vienna - Carp edema virus affects fish like carp, causing lethargy and eventual death. The disease originated in Asia and has now been detected in Austria.

The disease is also sometimes called koi sleepy disease. It is an infectious disease of fish, where they gravitate to the bottom of a pond or a river and display little movement.

Physiologically, the eyes of the fish become sunken, the skin undergoes flaking and the gills become swollen.If the swelling of the gills progresses then the fish dies through lack of oxygen.

The fish affected are mainly carp and koi. Carp is a general term for oily, freshwater fish including the silver carp, common carp and black carp.

Koi are a specific type of ornamental carp, which come in a variety of colors including white, black, red, yellow, blue, and cream.

The type of virus and how it reacts is still a mystery to virologists. It is thought that the infectious virus is related to the small-pox family (although it is not hazardous to humans). The case in Austria has allowed scientists to begin exploring the disease in more detail, using the latest molecular biology methods bolstered by electron micrography.
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Arrow Down

Lamb genetically modified with jellyfish sold as meat by Paris butcher

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:39 UTC
The following article takes the concept of Frankenfood to a whole other level.
GM Lamb
© AlamyA GM lamb (not shown) was sent to an abattoir from the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris late last year and somehow ended up on a butcher’s slab.
From the Guardian:
French authorities are looking into how a lamb genetically modified with jellyfish protein was sold as meat to an unknown customer, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.

The jellyfish-lamb, called "Rubis", was sent to an abattoir from the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris late last year and somehow ended up on a butcher's slab.
Yummy.
"A female lamb born to a sheep that was genetically modified as part of a medical research program was sold to a person in the Parisian region in October 2014," said the National Institute for Agricultural Research in a statement, confirming a story first reported by Le Parisien newspaper.

The case has been taken up by a public health court in Paris, a judicial source told AFP.

Rubis "found itself on a plate! Who ate it? No one knows," exclaimed Le Parisien on Tuesday.

France remains one of the staunchest opponents of GM research, ever since environmental protesters pressured the government into banning GM crops in the 2000s.

The European Union authorised the import and sale of 19 GM crops in April, but is likely to pass legislation allowing individual countries to block their use - in part thanks to demands from France.
Don't worry my fellow Americans, that is France, something like this could never happen here.
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Info

Poachers slaughtering African elephants on an 'industrial scale': Study


Metro (Canada)
Tue, 23 Jun 2015 19:09 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesElephants stroll through Namibia's Etosha Park
Investigators who collected DNA from the tusks of slain elephants and painstakingly looked for matches in the vast African continent have identified two large areas where the slaughter has been occurring on an industrial scale, according to a study published on Thursday.

The two areas are Tanzania in the east and a cross-border region encompassing several nations in the central-western part of Africa.

Samuel Wasser, an author of the study published in the journal Science, said he hopes the study will focus law enforcement efforts and increase international pressure on host countries to crack down on poaching, but he acknowledged the challenge.

"You're literally asking them to police themselves," Wasser said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He suggested donor countries could demand more robust conservation efforts in exchange for development aid.

The big size of shipments of confiscated ivory from both regions - over half a ton - indicates the presence of transnational crime syndicates likely operating with corrupt authorities, said researchers who matched DNA from seized tusks to samples of elephant hair, tissue and dung from wildlife parks across Africa.
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