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Qualität des Beitrags: Beteiligte Poster: infoshark Forum: SHARK-FORUM Forenbeschreibung: Treffpunkt für Haifans! aus dem Unterforum: Allgemein Thema Hai und Umwelt Antworten: 1 Forum gestartet am: Mittwoch 01.11.2006 Sprache: deutsch Link zum Originaltopic: Homer biologist aims to take bite out of shark tales Letzte Antwort: vor 15 Jahren, 9 Monaten, 14 Tagen, 17 Stunden, 26 Minuten
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Re: Homer biologist aims to take bite out of shark tales
infoshark - 13.06.2007, 15:58Homer biologist aims to take bite out of shark tales
Homer biologist aims to take bite out of shark tales
Don't ask Ken Goldman for good shark stories not the blood-drenched, flesh-tearing kind, anyway. A research biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Homer, Goldman has dedicated the last 18 years of his life to investigating these animals and overturning the kind of easy sensationalism sharks inspire.
Though Goldman, 44, grew up landlocked in Colorado, sharks bit his curiosity when he was a kid and never let go. Even at a young age, he had a sense that sharks were misunderstood.
"I knew 'Jaws' was just a good story," he says. Intrigued by how much wasn't known about sharks, Goldman began studying them and by his freshman year of college at San Francisco State University, he was a member of the American Elasmobranch Society, an organization of researchers around the world dedicated to the study of sharks, skates and rays. Now he's one of the society's directors.
During college, Goldman's advisers warned him that no one would hire him solely to study sharks. They urged him to develop research skills he could apply to a variety of organisms. So Goldman specialized in physiology and ecology and earned a doctorate in fisheries ecology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. After postdoctoral work at universities in California and Mississippi, Goldman joined the staff of Fish and Game in 2005. Here, Goldman's responsibilities have shifted to more staid, commercially fished species such as shrimp and scallop. But he remains involved in about a dozen shark research projects around the world.
Three common species of shark prowl Alaska waters: salmon shark, spiny dogfish and Pacific sleeper sharks. Goldman's work focuses mostly on salmon sharks, the mid-sized of this group and cousins to great whites of "Jaws" fame. Salmon sharks, which live only in the North Pacific, typically measure 6-8 feet long and weigh 300 pounds at adulthood. They have a muscular streamlined body, a cone-shaped snout that defies cuteness and rows of intimidating teeth. Clocked at 50 knots by the U.S. Navy, they are one of the sea's fastest swimmers and prey on salmon and other fish.
Goldman has been referred to as a "consummate scientist" which means he's scrupulous and passionate about his work, if a little geeky. He's eager to use science to protect these animals from what he sees as damaging hype.
Over the past seven years, Fish and Game has documented significantly higher rates of incidental shark catches in Cook Inlet by sport fishers. These statistics, along with anecdotes from people on the water, have fueled theories among scientists and the public alike about Alaska's sharks including that shark populations in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound have exploded, a notion Goldman is laboring to dispel. "There's just no data to support this," Goldman repeats.
It's not fierceness nor the rumored population surge that interests Goldman. He's fascinated by how salmon sharks, like humans and unlike nearly all other fish, maintain a body temperature far warmer than the waters through which they swim.
Goldman's research has quantified this unusual trait, finding salmon sharks able to maintain an internal temperature up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding water. His voice quickens and his hands begin to fin excitedly through the air when he describes how to take a shark's temperature.
"You tie a frozen herring to a transmitter," he begins. The shark swallows it, the transmitter logs the temperature inside the stomach and sends the data via an acoustic signal back to the researchers tailing the shark by skiff. Hours later, the shark regurgitates the sensor. Voila!
Goldman believes the shark's internal temperature trait may have helped salmon sharks expand into northern waters on an evolutionary time scale. Yet so much remains unknown about salmon sharks, such as how the ability to regulate their internal temperature influences their vast migrations between Alaska waters and Hawaii's tepid seas. Or how, on a cellular level, these fish are able to stay warm in frigid waters when they don't have the complex circulatory systems that benefit whales and other marine mammals. Or why researchers are finding almost no male salmon sharks in Alaska waters, while scientists off the coast of Japan see almost no females.
But Goldman says what we do know about salmon sharks makes it clear that these animals are not likely to experience a dramatic population increase: they grow slowly, taking about half a dozen years until they're ready to mate, and likely have only a few pups every two years. Probably, he says, these sharks are just grouping up in places where they didn't before, such as late summer in narrow bays in Prince William Sound where they've been observed to throng by the hundreds.
Even Goldman doesn't debate that sharks can be a nuisance and dense schools of them can exacerbate the problem. Salmon sharks are notorious for ruining nets and snapping line. Seiners sometimes pull up a net with a huge salmon shark thrashing about in the middle of the payload.
But the state has no plans to relax regulations that limit shark harvests. Currently, the bag limit for sharks is one per day and two per year. Commercial fishing for sharks is illegal in Alaska waters, with the exception of a special permit for spiny dogfish in Cook Inlet but only one fisherman has every applied.
A small sport fishery for salmon sharks exists in Prince William Sound, however. Salmon sharks are Alaska's only "big game" fish, and they are formidable fighters. Chasing salmon sharks is no macho sport for the narrow-framed, 6-foot-5-inch Goldman, whose primary sustenance during long days tracking sharks by boat is Frosted Mini-wheats.
With nearly two decades of shark research under his belt, Goldman still insists he's got no good shark stories. His worst shark bite? From a dead shark whose jaws clenched down on his hand as a result of rigor mortis.
Well, there was that one time, Goldman finally caves: He was in scuba gear off the coast of Australia testing a device that creates an electric field around researchers to protect them from shark attacks. When one shark was hit by the electric field, it began to thrash violently a dozen feet away from Goldman. The shark ripped the protective device in two, but no one was hurt. Goldman quickly drops the shark-gone-wild story to launch into a mini-lesson on how these fish use jelly-filled pores around their mouths to pick up the bioelectric field of prey.
Moving to Homer has meant a wonderful place to live and way of life for Goldman and his family. But he can't hide his disappointment over the lack of shark diversity in these northern waters.
This doesn't mean, however, that Goldman's challenges as a researcher have dwindled. He remains stalwart in his efforts to protect sharks from hyperbole and myth. And to rely on data to accurately assess the populations of these animals so they can be managed effectively. With research showing ocean temperatures on the rise, no one knows how salmon sharks whose ability to buffer from cold waters may have helped them steadily expand into Alaska waters long ago will respond.
"I want to be a voice for something that doesn't have one," Goldman says.
Quelle: HomerNews
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