The superhero like swimming of Manta Rays

What’s black and white and studied all over?

The post Whale Shark and Manta Ray Gif Roundup first appeared on Deep Sea News.

I’ve got something important I want to share with you that is not getting the attention it should from press or the authorities.  As regular #DeepSN readers will know, I work a lot with whale sharks in Yucatan Mexico as part of the research program at Georgia Aquarium and through association with the Mexican government and Mexican Conservation NGOs like Blue Realm/Ch’ooj Ajauil AC and Amigos de Isla Contoy.  Over the last few years many folks associated with these efforts have worked extensively to understand the largest aggregation of whale sharks in the world,  and we have begun to move towards conserving the extraordinary biodiversity of the marine realm of northern Quintana Roo, from Cancun to Cabo Catoche.  But, there is now a clear and present threat to marine life in this area.

Last year in cooperation with the Mexican national parks agency CONANP and Amigos de Isla Contoy, we (including DSN’s Dr. M!) installed an AIS receiver on the observation tower at Isla Contoy National Park, an incredibly picturesque island north east of Cancun.  This device relays signals from transmitters that are compulsory on all ships over 300 tonnes; signals that indicate ship ID, location, heading, destination and so on.  Our goal was to monitor commercial ship traffic in waters to the east of the island, where the majority of whale sharks gather these days, which is close to a big shipping lane at the western entrance to the Gulf of Mexico.  On July 6, however, we noticed in the data stream a ship doing some weird maneuvers, a ship which eventually came to a stop in the area immediately north of Isla Contoy.  The AIS data showed the ship to be a 300ft long bulk chemical tanker called Atlantic Sun and that she was anchored in less than 10m of water inside the bounds of the Whale Shark Biosphere Reserve, a marine protected area established in 2009 to conserve whale shark habitat.  The area is fedeally protected and anchoring is not allowed without special permitting.  It is certainly NOT appropriate anchorage for a 300ft chemical tanker.

Working with colleagues in Mexico we sent an aerial survey to confirm the presence and disposition of the ship and showed that yes, it was anchored in the protected area.  I contacted CONANP by email to urge an investigation, but to the best of my knowledge the ship remains today anchored in the MPA, some 2 weeks later.  Reports from contacts in Mexico suggest that the ship is either mechanically disabled or out of fuel, or both, and that the company that operates the ship may be in financial difficulties, which may be why they have not summoned a tug to move the ship to a more appropriate anchorage to await repairs or refueling.  There are reportedly six people on board – 5 men and 1 woman – and they are running low on supplies.  We are told that the cargo tanks are empty, which is good, but the ship itself represents a significant risk to healthy reef patches and adjacent bottom habitats, especially if it is disabled.  The potential anchor damage alone is significant.  Oil/diesel leakage and the risk of fuel spill from at-sea refueling should also be considered.  The best course of action is an immediate tow to the nearest safe harbour.

The maddening thing about this is that we warned about the risks of this some time ago.  Oh, and think about what could happen to a crippled tanker in shallow water if THIS continues on its current trajectory…

If you share our concern for the health of the Isla Contoy National Park, and for the whale sharks, manta rays, coral reefs, turtle mating/nesting areas, flamingos, manatees, dolphins, sailfish and frigate birds of northern Quintana Roo, please spread the word to your friends and colleagues in Yucatan Mexico, because so far there has been no press coverage in Cancun (or anywhere else) of this potential environmental disaster and little action from the regulatory authorities.  Marine protected areas and National Parks exist specifically to conserve extraordinary natural assets, but what good are they if we don’t use the provisions that they afford to effectively protect such critical habitats when they need it most?

You can email CONANP at  remolina@conanp.gob.mx

The post The Atlantic Sun is a potential environmental disaster first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The superhero like swimming of Manta Rays

What’s black and white and studied all over?

The post Whale Shark and Manta Ray Gif Roundup first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Mexico is hot.  Yucatan Mexico in August is hotter.  The top of the observation tower at Isla Contoy in August is hotter than Satan’s bike shorts.  Cutting two by fours up there with a vintage rusted hand saw is, as we would say back home,  hard yakka.  I don’t care what kind of cocktails your SoHo “mixologist” proffers for you from the safety barricade of his turtle neck at 2am, there’s only one drink for 2PM on a searing Quintana Roo afternoon when the sun is dogging you like a collection agency: beer. Yes, BEER.  Icy cold, delicious, sweet, bitter beer.  Bring. It. On. May it not touch the sides.  On the boat on the way back to Cancun, Beti busts out cans of Superior that have been secretly chilling all the while we were working at Contoy.   Ahhhh “Te Amo Beti!”, I think out loud; my beer fairy!  The icy sting of frosted can on lips pre-salted with sweat and seawater is as close to the drink of the gods as I know, even with a lingering aftertaste of contaminating Coppertone.

Assuming you don’t have Beti on your boat ensuring a consistent supply of lagers, though, you may need to consider beer cocktails as a facsimile.  Beer cocktails?  You betcha.  Lets start simple with a classic Mexican chelada:

1. Rim an ice cold glass with sea salt
2. Squeeze a quarter of a lime into said glass
3. Tilt and pour in a bottle of icy cold beer of the lager style popular in Mexico (Sol, Pacifico, Corona)
4. En-yoy

Cheladas are a mainstay of the all-inclusive resorts that line the zona hotelera south of Cancun, where folks sip them because, well, you’re supposed to in Mexico.  The truth, though, is that an earned chelada is ten times better than one ordered at leisure.

If, like me, you prefer a bit more meat on your sandwich, though, have you ever tried a michelada?  This is a slightly more derived beer cocktail that comes in a variety of types (and no, I don’t mean that unholy terror that Bud put out, which I refuse to link to).  I have had them in Mexico  with Worcestershire sauce, Maggi sauce, and even some sort of sarsparilla concentrate I didn’t recognise, but my favourite is actually one I used to make up as a breakfast for friends on early morning bass fishing trips to the lake near where we live in north Georgia.

Al’s Allatoona:

1. Take a 20 oz glass (or on the boat, a 24oz travel cup) and add a 12 oz beer.  I use PBR.  What, you got a problem with that?  Take it up with my fist…
2. Add 8-10 oz of clamato.  Yep, this cocktail includes actual seafood. How #DeepSN is THAT?
3. Add a goodly dash of hot sauce (I use a Panamanian sauce called Delidas, which is fantastic), a few drops of Maggi sauce and a liberal squeeze of lime juice
4. Add a 1/4 tsp of fresh squeezed horseradish, or equivalent amount of horseradish sauce
5. Add a dash, only a dash, of mirin.   This is my own modification to add a touch of savoury sweetness.  I pretty much add mirin to everything.
6. You can actually make up the mix (clamato, hot sauce, horseradish, Maggi, lime, mirin) ahead of time and bring that in a juice bottle to mix fresh with the cold beers.
7. Gulp heartily between pinpoint casts to submerged snags

What I love about this is that, like Thai food (and the best of all cuisines, for that matter), it hits every part of the palate: sweet, salty, hot, bitter and umami.  Fan-freakin’ tastic.  Truth be told, though, my buddies weren’t as big a fan of this as I am; Clamato isn’t for everyone.  If you’re already gagging at the very thought of seafood and alcoholic beverages, then over to Cartman.

Let’s say you’ve got a couple of cervezas under your belt and you’re ready to kick it up a notch.  May I recommend a tequilita and sangrita?  OK, I get that tequila scares a lot of folks, but I honestly think it’s because they’ve been drinking CRAP tequila.  Here’s a hint – if you need to “lick, shoot, suck”, then you’re drinking the wrong tequila.  Seriously.  There are as many good tequilas out there to try now as there are single malt scotches.  A really good tequila you will want to drink from a snifter, I kid you not.  If I can recommend just two to try, I suggest you look for Maestro Numero Uno Anejo (my all time fave) and Don Julio Setenta, a very unusual but delicious clear anejo.  If you can’t find these, though, lots of bars will have an ice cold bottle of Tradicional in the freezer, and “Quisiera una tequilita frio” will get you on on a path to happiness rapido.

In between tequilas, there’s a terrific idea called sangrita that I hadn’t met until a little while ago.  These are palate-clearing shots of fruity, tomato-based, um, stuff.  Look, it’s better if I just give you the recipe, which comes from a little bar at the old bull ring in Cancun centro.  It’s going to sound crazy but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

1. 6oz tomato juice
2. 2ox pineapple juice
3. 1 oz lime juice
4. 2 dashes grenadine
5. 1 dash tabasco sauce
6. 1 dash worcestershire sauce
7. 1 dash Maggi seasoning
8. 1/4 tsp sea salt

Serve in shot glasses with each tequila shot.

I’m sure there was supposed to be some marine science in this post, but I seem to have got totally distracted on alcoholic beverages.   How did that happen?  On second thoughts, don’t answer that, just wipe the tropical sweat from your forehead before it stings your eyes and try one of the above to alleviate the heat.

The post Forget 5 o’clock… first appeared on Deep Sea News.

My colleague Rafael de la Parra is the executive director of Ch’ooj Ajauil (Mayan for “Blue Realm”), a long time research partner of Georgia Aquarium and an excellent naturalist; he knows more about whale sharks in this area than anyone, and he’s a dab hand with marine mammals and other pelagic (in the water column, i.e. not on the bottom) species as well.  We headed out on Rafa’s boat, Grampus, for a day of whale shark photo identification in the waters east of Isla Contoy, an insular national park about 20 miles north-north-east of Cancun.  The wind and waves were against us and I didn’t have high hopes; indeed, the Harbor Master only opened the harbor for small boat activity at the last minute.  It was a predictably long and sloppy ride to the area of interest, but along the way I was encouraged to see some turtles (las tortugas), a curious group of spotted dolphins (delfin) and an abundance of flying fish (pez volador).  Eventually we reached a small flotilla of ecotourism boats, which gather as predictably around whale sharks as the frigate birds do above schools of baitfish.

Despite the conditions it turned out to be a truly magical day!  The whale sharks, perhaps 70-100 of them, were clustered especially tightly and it was not unusual to put your mask under the water and be able to see three or four simultaneously.  In fact, it makes it hard to get good photo ID images, because they are just coming too thick and fast, which I guess is a good problem to have on any day!

The ecotour boats gradually petered away until we were left alone to snorkel with the animals in the vast expanse of the offshore waters of the warm clear Caribbean.  I love it when it’s like that, because without distractions for us or the animals, behaviours are more normal and your eyes gradually open to all the other things that are going on around you.  And that’s when you realise that this patch of ocean, seemingly empty except for, you know, 100 whale sharks (!), is in fact replete with life.

Most obvious among the whale sharks were a number of manta rays.  These graceful pelagic animals are filter feeders just like the whale sharks so it’s no surprise that they often show up together.  I was lucky enough to experience several encounters with the same ray over the course of the day: a male missing one of his cephalic lobes, which are normally used for steering (like canards on aircraft) and to direct food into their capacious mouths.  Each time he found a dense patch of food (in this case almost certainly tuna eggs), he would barrel roll over and over, seemingly oblivious to his new dance partner floating enraptured above.

In between whale sharks, which are almost exclusively feeding at the very surface, it pays to look down deeper, perhaps 40-50ft.  Down there can be seen other graceful residents of the pelagic zone.  Mustard-coloured cownosed rays form large schools, gliding so slowly that they appear to hang suspended in the water.  Swifter are the mobulas or devil rays, which look like miniature manta rays and fly in formations of black white and grey against the cobalt blue of the deeper water.

Fish are there too.  I was buzzed by half a dozen small mahi mahi, which passed by so quickly that I barely had time to snap a picture as they passed.  Other fish hitch their wagon to the bigger animals; every whale shark is accompanied by a plethora of remoras, big and small, hitching a ride on the fins, riding alongside, or even swimming in and out of the mouth and gills.  Rainbow runner and small schools of sardines draft along behind or below their giant spotty compadres.

I even picked up my own hangers on: a pair of baby jacks that acted as pilot fish, riding the bow wave in front of my mask as I kicked hard to keep up with the sharks and rays, and getting in the way of my photographic efforts!

On the ride back to port (now thankfully with a gentler, following sea), I chatted with the others in our group about the feelings you get from these sorts of experiences and we concluded that you can’t really know unless you see it for yourself.  The two biggest things for me are first, the sense that the seemingly empty ocean really isn’t, that even in the absence of bottom features or structure of any kind, the pelagic zone is alive with diversity large and small, and second that this is a truly alien world here on earth.  We can intrude from the edges, for a brief period, and admire the grace and adaptive successes of the animals that live here, but this is not our world, not really, except in so far as we are stewards of the sea.  That feeling of having a window into another world must be a glimmer of how astronauts felt the first time they set foot on the moon.  It’s comforting to know that there are still amazing biological phenomena to see here on earth, in the oceans, if we just take the time, make an effort and peel back a corner of the curtain to peek into the fantastic world of the pelagic zone.

The post TGIF – Magical Quintana Roo first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Do you know anyone who lives near Seadrift TX, east of Corpus Christi/West of Houston?  I have a satellite tag that came ashore in Espiritu Santo Bay, inside Matagorda Is. and I’d love to get it back.  It was on a female whale shark called Lucy, who was tagged near Isla Contoy, Mexico.  The tag came off in the Flower Garden Banks offshore from Texas and gradually drifted inshore.  I’m pretty sure its on the beach now.

Last ping was 28.333N 96.598W, or the green arrow in this map.

It’s likely lying on the beach of that tiny spit of land, which is called Long Island.  There’s a boat ramp close by at the end of Lane Rd. that comes off Adams St (Rt. 185), which connects Seadrift to Pt. O’Connor.  Any help much appreciated, please share with your Texas friends and colleagues.  People can contact me through this website.

And THANKS!

The post DSN community, I need your help first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post TGIF – Handy with a knife first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post TGIF – the mesmerizing kelp edition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Cebu, Philippines.  Whale sharks are well known visitors to the Philippines and an ecotourism industry has been in place around Donsol in Sorsogon province for quite a few years.  By most accounts this is a reasonably well-regulated affair with an enforced code of conduct for ecotourists and business operators alike.  More recently, however, whale sharks (called “butanding” in Filipino) have begun to aggregate around Oslob in Cebu province and the situation there is a bit different.  Most importantly, the Oslob whale shark aggregation is not entirely natural.  Itinerant sharks first began showing up around artisanal fishers who were collecting krill at night time, presumably for making shrimp paste.  Over time the fishers learned that they could hand feed the sharks with portions of their catch and eventually the fishers began retaining the catch from the night before and taking tourists out during the day and baiting whale sharks with krill.

Any ecotourism opportunity that is based primarily on baiting a wild animal in this way is destined for controversy, and for good reason.  It’s not a good idea to have wild animals becoming dependent on people for food, nor is it wise to interact with them so closely that they lose their natural wariness of people.  This second point may be of less concern for whale sharks, which as far as I can tell are fairly indifferent to the presence of people (although not so with krill!).  The absence of a regulated industry in Cebu has also led to some prominent instances where people’s conduct around the animals has been less than ideal, the most famous of which involved a photograph of a small girl smiling as she stands on the back of a whale shark stranded in shallow water.  More recently, one of the well-known animals was injured by the propeller of a boat across the eye (which may or may not have been destroyed, it’s hard to tell because whale sharks can retract their eyes into their head).  There seems an urgent need in Cebu to evaluate how ecotourism is occurring there and even whether or not it should.  If the fishers stopped putting out krill, would the sharks move on?  It’s hard to say, but in the meantime the Cebu experience seems to be at best ethically dubious.

Cenderawasih, Indonesia.  Recently some spectacular videos have been circulating showing whale sharks “stealing” baitfish from the nets of artisanal fishers in Indonesia, specifically in Cenderawasih Bay in West Papua.  It appears that a cottage ecotourism industry is growing up around this occurrence.  One of the videos shows a whale shark eventually becoming entangled in the seine and needing to be freed by staff from Conservation International.  I haven’t been to see the whale sharks of Cenderawasih in person and I certainly think it’s wise to be cautious when interpreting YouTube videos, but it’s hard to see how basing an ecotourism experience on this behaviour is a good or sustainable thing.  The Indonesian situation is somewhat similar to Cebu in that it’s a baited aggregation, even if the sharks initiated the interaction the first time they approached a loaded fishing net.  Unlike Cebu, however, in Cenderawasih there is also the additional risk that the net itself poses to the sharks.  Entanglement as shown in the video is a concern, but I also think about the sharks swallowing part of the net or getting it hung up on their twenty filter feeding pads, both of which could seriously threaten their health.  Conservation International does a lot of work in that region of Indonesia as part of one of their 7 focus “SeaScapes” and I sincerely hope they guide the local communities to a more enlightened relationship with whale sharks.  Dr. Brent Steward has helped by coordinating a workshop and compiling a report with recommendations for better stewardship

Yucatan, Mexico.  The situation in Mexico is quite different from the other two examples.  Whale sharks have been known as regular visitors to the coast of the Yucatan peninsula for many years, most famously around Isla Holbox on the Gulf of Mexico side of the peninsula.  There, a fleet of pangas would take tourists to swim with a natural aggregation of whale sharks (usually 20-50 animals) that would come there each summer to feed in plankton rich waters around Cabo Catoche.  In more recent years, however, the whale sharks have been aggregating on the Caribbean side of the peninsula in an area to the east of the National Park island of Isla Contoy and not far from the major tourist destination city of Cancun.  This event is much larger and is, in fact, the largest aggregation of whale sharks anywhere in the world, with 300 or more whale sharks in the same place on some days.  The animals come to feed on tuna eggs and they offer a spectacular ecotourist experience because the “afuera aggregation” as it is known, involves so many animals and takes place in warm, clear, blue offshore waters.

The first problem is that the proximity of the 900lb gorilla that is Cancun provides an effectively unlimited scope for growth in the ecotourism industry, which is otherwise self-limiting in smaller towns such as Holbox.  The second problem concerns jurisdiction; the afuera location is not inside any National Park boundary and it is not always clear which state or federal agency is responsible for the stewardship of the animals.  The combination of these two factors has led to an exponential growth in the number of ecotour operators and the number of boats visiting the aggregation, and a reliance on self-regulation which is, frankly, failing.  It is rapidly developing into a classic Tragedy of the Commons scenario, in which the competing interests of individual operators inevitably overwhelm their common goal of protecting and preserving their livelihood, eventually resulting in the destruction of the very resource on which they all rely.  It’s important to note that this is not taking place because people are callous or uncaring; I know lots of ecotour folks and they are generally passionate and kind.  It is simply an emergent property of any group of people exploiting a common resource for individual benefit without a system of controls in place.  These situations require some regulatory intervention, which is where the jurisdictional issue is hampering progress towards sustainable ecotourism in Mexico.  Until these issues are resolved, the number of boats seems to keep growing and the risk of injury to whale sharks and even tourists themselves creeps inexorably higher as the density of sharks, boats (=propellers) and people in the water increases.  I sincerely hope it does not become one of those situations where a disastrous accident is required to elicit action.

One thing that is desperately needed is a better understanding of how ecotourism activities affect whale shark behaviour and natural history.  I intimated above that whale sharks generally seem indifferent to the presence of people, but there are some data that suggest a decline in both number and mean size of whale sharks at at least one popular ecotourism site in Ningaloo, Australia.  I don’t think we can afford a “no news is good news” approach to this issue; the scientific and conservation community really needs to get out there and gather some hard data to help answer these questions and help the regulatory authorities to make better decisions about how to manage these industries.  How exactly might we do that?  What would we look for?  These will be difficult questions to answer when so little known about whale shark behaviour as it is, but answer them we must.

In all three examples above, and in ecotourism generally, I think it’s important to celebrate people’s passion for experiencing nature first hand and their willingness to spend their tourist dollars to do that rather than other, shall we say, less substantial tourist activities.  There’s also nothing wrong with businesses developing to serve these needs and with people making a living and succeeding as a result of their hard work.  But neither of these things should be allowed to go unchecked if it comes at the expense of animal (or human) safety.    If they happen anyway, then we really need to take a long hard look at ourselves and what we are calling “ecotourism” and ask if we are really achieving the dream of enjoyable, sustainable, safe and lucrative industries based on the wonders of nature.

The post Whale shark ecotourism: the good, the bad and the ugly first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In 2009, Keyhole is at Holbox to feed. His considerable stature requires a dense food source, such as ghost shrimp and copepods found at Holbox. A year later and every since, Keyhole switched to feeding at Afeura on masses of fish eggs.

I encountered Keyhole two days ago in my first swim with whale sharks in the wild. I arrive at the Afeura excited and cannot get my mask, fins, and snorkel on fast enough. I toss my self over the port side of the boat. Two strong kicks later and I match Keyhole’s speed but only briefly. For once, and with mixed emotions, I am not the largest vertebrate in the ocean. By eye, I can judge that Keyhole is over three times my own length. The height of his tail fin is taller than myself at six feet. But precisely how large is Keyhole?

Why is knowing Keyhole’s length essential to understanding whale sharks? Repeated size measurements of Keyhole, can inform us of his health and feeding opportunities over his life. Whale sharks, like other sharks can actually ungrow. If a whale shark has a bad year, so to speak, the shark can reabsorb some of its cartilaginous skeleton for energy. A 24 foot long whale shark one year may be only 22 feet long the next year. If we have not only Keyhole’s measurements but all of his whale shark friends at the Alfeura, we can also know the age structure of the population. Is it mainly young and shorter sharks? Is the Afeura fun for all ages?

Measuring a formidable ocean beast on the move is at best a challenge and borders on impossible. No matter how many times I ask the whale sharks will not hold still long enough for me to use a tape measure. If I swim at my fastest I have a matter of seconds to minutes along side Keyhole or his colleagues, enough time for one or two photographs. However, I have a secret James Bond style weapon. Lasers.

Two bright green lasers 50 centimeters apart, my camera mounted between them, shine on the side of whale shark. I quickly snap a photo. Knowing the distance between the two green dots on the shark’s flank, allows me to calculate the distance between any other two points in the same photograph, in this case the distance between the fifth gill and the start of the dorsal fin. To be close enough for the green laser dots to show up on the whale shark, doesn’t allow me to photograph the entire animal. But knowing the length from gill to fin and having a simple formula,
allows me to extrapolate the length of the entire animal.

Sharks and lasers, never a more perfect union.

The post Sharks and lasers, not just for entertainment! first appeared on Deep Sea News.