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Letter to the Discovery Network

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To the Discovery Network: Members of our Internet shark discussion forum, SHARK-L, have been asked by your marketing representatives to help promote your famous Shark Week sequence. This letter, signed by list members and friends, is our formal response to the request from your grass roots agency, New Media Strategies, for our support of the programming. How can we support Discovery Channel when we are fighting for shark conservation, and its biggest obstacle is the monster image given to sharks by the media, including Shark Week programs? Further, some of us who have been directly involved in the production of your documentaries feel disgusted at the way that our interviews were censored and our words twisted around. Our group is comprised of scientists, researchers, educators, media companies, and many NGO's, lobbyists and others. In aggregate we represent a strong network of influence that can help or hurt the efforts of any Shark related programming or initiatives. In...
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On the gestation period of the blackfin reef shark, Carcharhinus melanopterus in waters off Moorea, French Polynesia

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Originally published in the Journal "Marine Biology" at: http://link.springer.de   Abstract Underwater visual and photographic observations, over a four year period, monitored the presence of mating wounds on female Carcharhinus melanopterus . Mating begins in November and continues until the end of March as each female follows her own temporal cycle. Correspondingly, parturition begins in September and continues until January. Each female again mates 1.5 to 2.5 months after parturition, thus completing an annual reproductive cycle. The gestation period is 286 to 305 days, with slight individual differences. All resident sharks under observation followed this pattern. Evidence of reproductive events presented by transient females conformed with the pattern of the residents. Introduction The few studies postulating a gestation period for the reef blackfin shark Carcharhinus melanopterus have varied greatly in their conclusions. Based on an examin...
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Samuel H. 'doc' Gruber: Shark Science Pioneer

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Doc Gruber began studying sharks in 1961, perhaps before any other scientist had done full-time research on a living shark. During his long career, he founded the Bimini Biological Field Station (Shark Lab), the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, (IUCN), a United Nations organization based in Switzerland, and the American Elasmobranch Society. He has published over 200 scientific papers, and his research is still ongoing today.  His decision to study sharks was as unplanned as it was final. Doc in 1957 with black grouper As a young man growing up in Florida, he loved to dive, and often went off for weekends of scuba diving and spear fishing on a 30 metre schooner called the Blue Goose. The ship had belonged to Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) under the Nazis, and it had found its way to Miami when it was liberated at the end of World War II. A weekend of diving fun on the Blue Goose ...
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