The next big Shark Week debut tonight is “Greenland Shark Quest,” an episode of “Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.”

In this episode, Mike travels to the far north to tag along with scientists trying to study Greenland sharks below the ice.

It looks awfully cold - sounds like Mike misses last year’s trip to the Bahamas.

The Greenland Shark

The Greenland shark is the 4th largest in the world, measuring 11 to 16 feet long, and weighing 500 to 700 pounds. Apparently, their meat is poisonous and must be boiled repeatedly to be eaten - yikes.

After numerous failed attempts, they finally got one! The team seems excited, but Mike seems a bit nonplussed - maybe because Greenland shark is “like the alligator of the Arctic, known to wait just below the ice to ambush caribou.” (reindeer)

When the job gets dirty

I was wondering when this job was going to get dirty - fishing for Greenland sharks looks cold, but not too bad. Turns out, when the research really gets dirty is when one of the sharks dies on the fishing lines (don’t worry - the species is still plentiful in the region) - then the team springs into action and begins an on-site dissection.

Currently, Mike is holding, in his hand…an eyeball.

Mike and the team have cut right into the middle of the shark to get a sample of the shark’s vertebrae, and also a chunk of the muscle tissue. Apparently, Greenland sharks can live up to 400 years!

Eeew…here comes the stomach autopsy. I kid you not, Mike is currently helping this researcher pull small crustaceans (amphipods) out of the stomach as proof that something the shark ate was rotting before the shark ate it.

Yum.

And just because it’s “Dirty Jobs” tonight…

The final shark they tagged just had to poo right in front of Mike.

The Best of Shark Week

Shark Week continues on the Discovery Channel tonight with two new shows:

DIRTY JOBS: GREENLAND SHARK QUEST
Premieres Tuesday, July 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
DIRTY JOBS’ Mike Rowe, who travels north to the edge of the Arctic Circle in search of the mysterious Greenland shark. These large sharks are slow-moving behemoths, and learning more about them will help scientists understand the rapid ecological changes affecting that part of the world, and how the Greenland shark impacts the food chain there.

HOW NOT TO BECOME SHARK BAIT
Premiering Tuesday, July 29, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Sharks may have a bad reputation, but you actually have a very slim chance of being attacked by one. A thrill-seeking team with a purpose travel to the Bahamas to test shark attraction theories on lemon, tiger and Caribbean reef sharks. In the process, viewers learn strategies for staying safe when in the water.

The Shark Bait show sounds very similar to the tests that they’ve been running all week, and I imagine that the show will focus on Samuel Gruber’s Bimini Biological Field Station and Jim Abernathy’s dives at Tiger Beach in the Bahamas.

However, the Dirty Jobs show will be featuring a little-known shark and actually getting amazing first-time footage. The Greenland shark is one of the lesser known species and easily one of the hardest to study, seeing as it lives way up under the Arctic ice. I’m really, really excited about this show and am looking forward to covering it.

If you want to keep track of all the Shark Week coverage, make sure you click “SUBSCRIBE” to follow all the coverage.

SURVIVING SHARKS
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Survivorman’s Les Stroud travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test whether the behavior of Caribbean reef sharks and great whites changes depending upon the time of day. While in South Africa, Les and marine biologist Jeremiah Sullivan conduct an analysis of the great white’s bite, and test whether kicking and splashing attracts sharks, and if it’s safer to stay in a group or tread water alone if stranded in the ocean.

The show has just begun, and Les just stabbed his own life raft, plunging into a swirling mass of sharks. Here we go!

The first step for surviving shark attacks is to avoid them

Clever, that Les Stroud. First, he tells us this. Then, he dumps 500 pounds of frozen fish into the water to test whether sharks are more aggressive during daytime or during the night. Turns out, if you give a group of sharks 500 pounds of fish, they’ll go crazy ANY time of day. Reminds me of the free iPod sales at Wal-Mart.

How to Survive the Great White Shark

Les has traveled to South Africa’s famous Shark Alley now to try to answer this question. He’s in a cage, but it’s not looking good.

Oh, look, he’s going night-diving with Great Whites…greaaaaat. I’ve always wanted to see a Great White in the wild, but would you go in there at night? For any amount of money?

Do chain-mail shark suits work against the Great White?

Haha…no, “Bit it right in half.” Wow, he just bit right through that stuff like it was nothing.

They’re testing out a new material now. Wow! The new material was totally untouched, but when the shark couldn’t bite through it, he just tried to SWALLOW it! Not sure how much good that would do. Plus, who’s to say it wouldn’t crush your body inside it?

That was an awesome segment.

Should you flee a Tiger Shark or turn to fight?

They’ve got a 14 foot Tiger Shark next to the boat. “You sense that you’re being stalked by a tiger shark. You’ve got a decision to make - do you turn and fight? Or swim for the boat”

This should be good.

Holy crap! When the mannequin was swimming, the tiger sharks kept their distance. However, when the mannequin was left just sitting in the water like a person who decided to just watch the shark, the shark came in for bumps and then an attack, and the commotion attracted a second tiger, who joined in! Then, once they’d already got going, the tiger sharks moved onto the camermen, bumping and rushing them so persistently that the camera divers had to be hurried out of the water.

If stranded at sea, will clustering in a group or stay alone?

They’ve got pairs of legs in the water, three in a group and one solo pair of legs. The tigers have been giving the solo pair of legs some bumps. WHOA! That was that - the tiger sharks just went right past the group of legs and ripped the solo pair of legs apart.

Granted, these legs were full of bleeding meet, so don’t assume a shark would bite you just because you were lost at sea. If you were bleeding, though…

How do you stop a shark attack once it’s begun?

Well, one answer is basically an underwater fire extinguisher. Even with a diver in the middle of a feeding frenzy, Les jumped in with this nifty device and scared ‘em all off.

Next up is the “Shark Shield,” an electro-pulse device that should scare the sharks away long enough to make an escape.

Ooh, very cool - even when it’s wrapped around a yummy fish, the Shark Shield scares them right away. Apparently the electric pulse interferes with the Ampullae de Lorenzini, the electric-sensing pores on a shark’s snout that allow it to sense living things in the water.

Final verdict?

Swimming away might keep you safe, the new Shark Shield device and fire extinguisher type shark repellants are very effective, and there’s NOT much you can do if you get in trouble with a Great White shark.

That’s all for now, “Day of the Shark” is up next. Thanks for stopping by!

If you want to keep track of all the Shark Week coverage, make sure you click “Subscribe” to follow all the coverage.


The Best of Shark Week

I’ve been torn ever since this blog started about how much to engage in political discussions on Science Says:

On one hand, I don’t want to alienate anyone because of my personal politics. It seems to me that America is deeply divided right now between two contrarian political philosophies, but environmental problems are everyone’s problems - Republican or Democrat, this is our planet and we all have to live in the mess we’ve made.

On the other hand, Republican or Democrat, we all have to live in the mess we’ve made of this planet, and environmental problems require political solutions. There can be no doubt any longer that our President is an enemy of the environment - President Bush has deferred to business interests at the expense of the environment at every turn. In addition, America’s in the midst of a Presidential election campaign that’s pit two candidates who have very different beliefs about the state of the environment and very different ideas about how to deal with them. As a result, can you discuss the environment without getting into politics?

The reason I bring this up is that I know myself well enough to have learned that my political beliefs and particularly my sense of humor about politics can be abrasive to people with different beliefs or more modest feelings about things.

It just so happened that I was preparing another post about John McCain and offshore drilling with some glee, and in doing so realized that I needed to step back and make sure that the humor I saw was from an environmental perspective, and not a political one.

What do you think - can environmentalism be separated from talk of politics?

MYTHBUSTERS: SHARK SPECIAL
Premieres Sunday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Get a reminder.
Do dogs attract sharks? Do the vibrations caused by a flapping injured fish attract sharks? Does chili powder repel sharks? And hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman create the ultimate SHARK WEEK build – a 16-foot-long robo-shark!

Allright, here are the big myths they’re testing tonight:

Could you reach a shark’s eyes to stop a shark attack?

This one comes complete with a 16-foot robotic Great White shark, and a full mouth of rubber shark teeth! Poor Tory got shoved in the jaws of a robot shark and given a good shake around.

Since the team couldn’t test whether eye-poking works on a real Great White shark, they settled for testing whether it was possible to reach the eyes, and to do it while being shaken around.

Can a person reach the shark’s eyes? Definitely. Could a person figure it out fast enough? Probably not. Could a person who knew to reach for the eyes even get the eyes fast enough when they’re being attacked? Maybe, but it’s all a matter of luck and how the shark grabs you.

MAYBE: the Mythbusters say it’d be too hard to do, but it’s worked before…

Are sharks repelled by magnets?

The Mythbusters team ran tests on both juvenile and full-sized sharks to determine how the magnets affected them. The results were odd: the juvenile shark they tested was very clearly repelled by the magnet and wouldn’t cross a line of them in his pen.

However, with full-sized lemon sharks, they found that the magnets did nothing to repel them, even with the team’s most powerful magnets. That could be because the adult sharks weren’t as sensitive, or could also be because they were in  feeding mode because of the fish-bait. Very cool test.

MAYBE: juveniles are, but adults might not be bothered

Can playing dead save you in shark-infested waters?

Based on the famous shipwreck of the USS Indianapolis during World War II, the worst shark attack in history, the team tested this one by putting two guys in the water and having one of them flap around. The sharks were clearly more interested in the flapping guy, and they confirmed this myth as true. However, would the sharks have been interested in the other guy if there hadn’t been someone else flapping nearby? They never covered this, so we don’t know.

MAYBE: sharks are more interested in a flapping person, but the test was incomplete

Are sharks attracted by swimming dogs?

For this one, they built a dog-like robot - looks like a dog, swims like a dog, and is even full of liquid from real dog’s anal scent glands. So will it work?

Apparently not - the only thing that got any response was releasing a bit of blood in the water, but the sight, smell and motion of the robot dog didn’t get the sharks to do anything.

Is that because sharks aren’t attracted by dogs, though? Or do they just dislike dog-robots? Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way for the show to test this one.

BUSTED: the sharks didn’t respond to the robot at all

Are sharks attracted to flashlights?

This one was a definite “yes.” The sharks were all over the team as soon as they turned their flashlights on. They saw more than twice as many sharks as the previous night, when there was only ambient lighting. Additionally, when the flashlights were on, the sharks came straight at the testers instead of just hovering in the area. Very cool, the sharks got so excited the Mythbusters got scared and cut the test short, getting out of the water ASAP.

DEFINITELY: the sharks went bonkers for the Mythbusters with flashlights

Are sharks repelled by chili peppers?

This one was inspired by a Native American legend, according to the show. They filled balloons with pureed habanero chilis. This one was a total bust - the sharks chomped down on the balloons and showed no sign of being bothered, even coming back for a second pass to try to find out what was going on.

BUSTED: the sharks weren’t repelled; in fact, they ate it right up

Are sharks more attracted to flapping fish than dead ones?

Yes, but only if they can see and hear them. This one was tested first with dead fish, but they realized the sharks could just be coming for the scent of food. However, even when they tested this with plastic fish models, the sharks came right over. When the sharks couldn’t see the fish decoy, though, they came right up to the boat, but didn’t strike.

DEFINITELY: the sharks even went after the fake fish they splashed against the surface.

Stay tuned for Tuesday night’s coverage of “Surviving Sharks,” with Les Stroud from Survivorman!

The Best of Shark Week

The first new premiere is at 9pm EST on the Discovery Channel, with the 2008 Mythbusters shark special, testing tons of theories about shark attraction and shark attacks.

They’ve been reviewing some of their best material all day, culminating in last year’s Mythbusters: Jaws Special this evening.

As I mentioned a couple of day ago, I’ll be live-blogging the shows both here on the site, and real-time on my Twitter account, which you can follow here.

If you want to make sure you catch all the articles and updates on Shark Week 2008, you can subscribe to Science Says by Email or RSS feed at http://www.sciencesays.net/feed/

Stay tuned!

Wired.com had an article on their front page this week covering the debate over “assisted migrations,” and in particular a recent proposal to relocate polar bears to the South Pole.

If the most dire climate predictions come to pass, the Arctic ice cap will melt entirely, and polar bears could face extinction.

So why not pack a few off to Antarctica, where the sea ice will never run out?

It may seem like a preposterous question. But polar bears are just the tip of the “assisted colonization” iceberg. Other possibilities: moving African big game to the American Great Plains, or airlifting endangered species from one mountaintop to another as climate zones shrink.

For a quick bit of background, polar bears live near the North Pole…on the other side of the world!!!

So- why, you might ask, would anyone consider such a seemingly hair-brained idea as this?

Well, is an Antarctic polar bear colony better than no polar bears at all?

Maybe for a day or two, before they gobble up every penguin in their line of sight.

The broader question here is about the value of “assisted migration” - humans moving animals and plants from one place to another has had disastrous effects throughout our history, especially across oceans. Cane toads in Australia, “killer bees” from Africa, and species from Europe moved all over the world. It’s impossible to predict the effect that a new species will have on a foreign environment, and they can be straightforward, like eating or out competing local wildlife in the way cats and rats have, or as unanticipated as the seeds and bacteria stored in cattle stomachs wreaking havoc on local flora.

In an environment as delicate and highly specialized as Antarctica, a disruption would have even broader and more rapid consequences. In fact, in such an extreme environment, it should not be assumed that Polar Bears could even survive.

Source: “Last-Ditch Resort: Move Polar Bears to Antarctica?”- Wired.com

UPDATE: 

• Mythbusters Shark Myths of 2008
• Surviving Sharks with “Survivorman” Les Stroud

As many of my readers will already know, I’m a shark fanatic - they’re what I like to read about, what I like to write about, and what I’m hoping to work with in my career.

As a result, Shark Week every year on the Discovery Channel is a big deal for me. I look forward to it every summer and particularly to the new programming. This year’s lineup doesn’t disappoint:

SHARK WEEK 2008 PREMIERES:

MYTHBUSTERS: SHARK SPECIAL
Premieres Sunday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Get a reminder.
Do dogs attract sharks? Do the vibrations caused by a flapping injured fish attract sharks? Does chili powder repel sharks? And hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman create the ultimate SHARK WEEK build – a 16-foot-long robo-shark!

SURVIVING SHARKS
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Survivorman’s Les Stroud travels to the Bahamas and South Africa to test whether the behavior of Caribbean reef sharks and great whites changes depending upon the time of day. While in South Africa, Les and marine biologist Jeremiah Sullivan conduct an analysis of the great white’s bite, and test whether kicking and splashing attracts sharks, and if it’s safer to stay in a group or tread water alone if stranded in the ocean.

DAY OF THE SHARK
Premieres Monday, July 28, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Do shark encounters happen more frequently in the morning or night? This special chronicles six recent shark attacks that took place at different times of day. Top shark experts weigh in on what time of day is better or worse for avoiding sharks.

DIRTY JOBS: GREENLAND SHARK QUEST
Premieres Tuesday, July 29, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
DIRTY JOBS’ Mike Rowe, who travels north to the edge of the Arctic Circle in search of the mysterious Greenland shark. These large sharks are slow-moving behemoths, and learning more about them will help scientists understand the rapid ecological changes affecting that part of the world, and how the Greenland shark impacts the food chain there.

HOW NOT TO BECOME SHARK BAIT
Premiering Tuesday, July 29, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Sharks may have a bad reputation, but you actually have a very slim chance of being attacked by one. A thrill-seeking team with a purpose travel to the Bahamas to test shark attraction theories on lemon, tiger and Caribbean reef sharks. In the process, viewers learn strategies for staying safe when in the water.

MYSTERIES OF THE SHARK COAST
Premieres Thursday, July 31, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Australia’s northeastern coast is a hotbed for shark activity. Its tropical seas are home to more species of sharks than anywhere else in the world. But there’s trouble in the sharks’ stronghold Down Under – even here the sharks are disappearing. What’s happening to them?

You can bet that I’ll be watching and writing up reviews of each of these new shows, and I’ll be doing it live for as many of them as possible. The rest I’ll have DVR’d and the write-up will be here the next morning.

Technorati Tags: sharks, shark week, jim abernathy, discovery channel

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk…I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously” - Al Gore

Al Gore gave a speech yesterday in Washington pushing for America to switch to renewable energy. His main points were:

• Produce all electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources in 10 years
• Bring gas prices down by reducing dependence on oil
• Renewable energy at equivalent of $1/gallon gas

He also blasted Bush and McCain for pushing for offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR, suggesting that:

“It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now”

You can read the full speech here.

photo courtesy of World Economic Forum

President Bush announced today that he is going to lift the executive order that bans offshore oil drilling.

Some have labeled this move as purely symbolic, since there is additionally a federal law in place.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Why It Must Be Stopped

President Bush’s decision, coupled with John McCain’s campaign promises, are part of a larger plan to place pressure on the Congress to repeal the law and do one last favor to the oil companies before the President skulks out of office.

Offshore oil drilling:

• Destroys fragile coral reefs

• Trashes nearby beaches

• Risk of devastating oil spills

What You Can Do To Stop It

Call your senators and representatives! Tell them you don’t want oil rigs damaging our coasts!

You can find their phone numbers here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml

“Hi, my name is _____, please do not allow the ban on offshore drilling to be lifted. Thank you.”

It will take less than 5 minutes to look up the phone number and make those calls.

More Info on Why It’s So Important

The Energy Information Administration says it will do no good. (…will not lower gas prices)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr …

McCain’s campaign also says it will do no good;
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/top-mccain-adv …

No expert will back the BushCain claim;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/23/impossibl …

The Saudi’s will pump more this year at our President’s request than the entire drilling venture would contribute

FIXED: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/24/151852/ …

This post could not have come together without the enormous and contribution of MorganMghee from Digg.com. Thanks Morgan!