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Announcing a Special Issue on Elasmobranch Behaviour!

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When I discovered sharks in the turquoise Tahitian lagoons, I was fascinated by their complex and clearly intelligent responses in different situations. Based on what I saw myself, I figured they were more intelligent than dogs. But later, when I got an internet connection, I was shocked to learn that science had not noticed! By then the community I had watched for years was being slaughtered for shark fin soup, so I wrote down the story of my beloved thoughtful sharks in my first book, The Shark Sessions. Since then I have been trying to publish my findings scientifically, which has been a real challenge for an isolated wildlife artist. However, two years ago, an editor of the journal Behaviour was taken with my writing and invited me to organize a Special Issue on my favourite subject: Elasmobranch behaviour and cognition. It was a real learning experience for me and I was lucky that shark Ethologist Professor A. Pete Klimley offered to help. Not only did his advice serve as a valua
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Cognitive Dissonance and the Bias Against Sharks

Something strange in society that is never mentioned is how the reality we face as adults does not correspond in important ways to the one we learned about growing up. Since this discrepancy remains unacknowledged, each of us discovers and must investigate its length and breadth alone.   The irrational nature of the bias held against sharks in Western society became evident to me during discussions on the Internet discussion list, Shark-L from 2002 to 2008. Being familiar with the behaviour of several species of wild sharks, I found that the members seemed to be talking about a different animal. While a large proportion of those posting on the list were apparently in thrall to the great white shark ( Carcharodon carcharias ) , a variety of shark scientists and shark fishermen from many countries were also members; membership at that time was between 450 to 500 people. The subject of shark attacks commonly generated avid discussion, and during the year that Discovery Channel presented
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Shark Fishing vs Conservation: Analysis and Synthesis

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  The review of the status of sharks that I wrote with Professor Brian W. Darvell, Shark Fishing vs. Conservation: Analysis and Synthesis has been published Open Access in the journal Sustainability. With traditional fish stocks 90% overfished, sharks (along with tuna) have become the most lucrative prey for fisheries due to the value of their fins. So, with fishing scarcely profitable any more, fishing fleets around the world have joined in the hunt for them. The meat is pushed onto consumers using other names, so it is largely the shark fin trade that drives the so-called market for shark meat. As a result, those species of sharks and rays accessible to fishing fleets are approaching extinction. Further, the removal of these top and middle predators has resulted in drastic, long-term changes in oceanic and coastal ecosystems—a complete rebalancing. Yet most ecosystem changes remain unknown and are not taken into account by Regional Fisheries Management Organizations.
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Debunking Shiffman's Latest: "The role and value of science in shark conservation advocacy”

Although written in an authoritative style, Shiffman et al .’s paper “ The role and value of science in shark conservation advocacy ” (2021) contains a number of lethal flaws which invalidate it. In particular, it claims that the survey on which it is based shows that conservationists favour bans over sustainable shark fishing more than scientists. But in fact the survey of scientists cited (Shiffman & Hammerschlag 2016 b) showed that 63% of scientists favour bans while this paper states that only 41% of conservationists do. This mismatch between the findings of the two surveys and the claims of these authors invalidates much of what they state. Their survey also establishes that conservationists do in fact base their published information on scientific papers, rather than public belief or moral considerations, so the authors’ conclusion is seriously in error. Leaving aside for the moment the reason why alleged “shark scientists” would spend the time it took to write
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