Basking Sharks Galore!!

In early August we headed up to Scotland for another dose of Basking Shark action, with hopefully another set of memorable encounters like those we had in 2009. The recession has certainly had an impact on firm bookings for this year, though with plenty of enquiries for next year, when hopefully at least the world's money worries will be a fading memory. I'm not altogether sure that the sharks will be any better, because, without wishing to wear out any superlatives, this year they were nothing less than blinking well gloriously amazing, incredible, AND spectacular. There you go, I didn't use too many, I didn't even say "stunning".


As ever our hearty Captain Fairbairns was up for the adventure and no sea would be too stormy, no wind too foul, no rain too watery(!?), to keep us from our quest. The site that eluded us last year proved to be this years hotspot. We had already spied one shark on leaving port, but we were not prepared for the sight that greeted us at the southern end of our destination island.

Some 40 sharks circled the spacious bay, and we only had to stay in one spot and patiently wait for them to circle. They were in full feeding mode, circling down current and then back up again ready to pose for us in some of their legendary mouth open passes.



We tried our our new itinerary modification this year and camped on some beaches to leave us closer to the action for the next day's work. We learned a few of the ideosynchrasies of beach camping in the process, and let ourselves be well prepared to offer this as a full product for the 2011 season. Look out for the new itinerary and lower prices to be posted on the Acuatours site soon.

Next up: The Giant Manta Rays of Ecuador. Supported by the Save Our Seas Foundation.

Amazon Itinerary 2011

We have just posted details of our Andes to Amazon itinerary on our Acuatours main site. You can download it here. Condors, Volcanos, Spectacled Bears, Cloud Forest, Amphibians, Caiman, Pink River Dolphin. This has to be one of the most comprehensive Ecuadorean ecosystem naturalist and photography tours available today.

What a Corker!!!

Cor Blimey Guvna!! I could get a job at the Sun writing headlines like that. Not that I would want one...well..just the pay cheque maybe. Anyway, on with the reasoning behind the post. My good friend and top class guitar player (her tutor says she has a really nice rythm) Marta "La Tomata" Rodriguez Herranz sent me this article about how eco friendly different types of wine bottle sealers there are. Cork, Screw Top or Plastic? Well, knowing nothing at all about the cork making process, after reading the article (sorry if you clicked the link and don't speak spanish!) it seems the 2.2 million hectares of land currently occupied by forests of trees grown for the industry, are important absorbers of CO2. Plastic corks are responsible for 6 times more CO2 emmisions than cork, and aluminium screw tops (you know, the ones where you think the wine must be crap before you even buy it) are responsible for fifteen times more CO2 emmisions than cork. Despite this, alternative wine "tops" are increasing in popularity, so much to the extent that WWF Spain have launched a "Save the Cork" campaign after studies showed that forests used for corking, which involves cutting limbs from live trees and allowing them to regrow, absorb between three and five times more CO2 than dormant forestry.

Probably the Best Diving Videos Ever...

This video was first sent to me by my friend Wolfgang, a couple of months ago, back then I think it had something like 750,000 views on youtube. Now it has over 4 million!!! It is simply stunning. Fantastic camera and editing work and of course an inspirational subject.



And this is from the infamous blue hole in Dahab.

Why we should appreciate Shark Savers...

Shark Savers, the stateside non profit organisation, seems to be the first such organisation to be mentioning the need to include manta and mobula products alongside the call to protect all shark species.
It has surprised me how quickly the demand for manta/mobula products has risen, we have seen the growth of considerable mobula catches in Ecuador where only 12 months ago there were none.
It has been mentioned a time or two in the UK press, including this article in the Times, that as a side effect of the overfishing of sharks: a reduction in worldwide total shark catches, the buyers supplying the lucrative fin trade are seeking manta/mobula products to fulfil that demand. Of course it is not long taken before the fishermen answer that demand and begin to target these massive and graceful rays.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes the scientific community to begin to call for protective measures. There is very little research into population sizes, and for mantas it is thought that the numbers could be very small indeed, far smaller than global shark populations, and so the demise of these most magnificent of species could be swift, and dare I say, hardly even noticed by the land loving general public.
Shark Savers do not seem to be bogged down with the requirement of every argument to be backed up with scientific evidence. Although this does have its severe pitfalls (imagine the mess the IPCC would be in now if it didn't have peer reviewed scientific data to back up its arguments...errr..what..oh ok....sshhhhhhh), there is a definite case for much of the emphasis of conservation effort to come from the heart, and not the mind. There is a certain air of haughty exclusivity amongst much of the science community, some of that I would hazzard a guess, is derived from stopping someone from stealing all your data. Understandable, of course, but the closed society of science is not paritucalarly brilliant when it comes to asking for help from Joe Public. Shark Savers therefore is a fine example of how to bridge that gap. They have a very well qualified baord of directors, who collectively know an immense amount about the subjects that shark savers deals with, but, they present it to a broad audience, global in fact, in a non patronising, informative manner. Let's hope that the conservation community takes at least one leaf out of the Shark Savers book and starts to talk about the problems faced by a quickly dwindling population of Mantas and Mobulas.

Click here to sign the Shark Savers petition to save the mantas and mobulas of Raja Ampat.

The Way of the Dragon

Heavyweight environmental bloggers, Mongabay, have published a very insightful piece on their site today, in a revealing interview with Grace de Gabriel, Director IFAW Asia. The post is a transcript of an interview originally aired on the radio show 'The Wildlife with Laurel Neme'.

The main interest of the interview is the deep cultural dependency from some sectors of Chinese society on traditional medicine, and how that is clashing with efforts to conserve the last remaining wild tigers on the Asian sub-continent. This revealing insight into what is probably one of the conservation sector's most urgent battles raises issues that are commonly encountered in shark conservation. What can us marine conservationist hope to learn from this scenario? One would think that, having estimated that there are only 3,200 tigers left in the wild, that us humans would have an easy time in convincing perpetrators of tiger crimes that it is time to hang up the traps and guns. Sadly, the Mongabay Article reveals that quite the opposite is true....
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Whaling Talks Break without result

The blogosphere has started humming after the IWC talks in Morocco are reported to have ended without a solution. Therefore, the status quo will be upheld, i.e. whaling is still illegal, but those who deem that law non applicable will continue to break it. Japan, Iceland and Norway all currently kill whales illegally and conservation groups go out in their boats and try to stop them. This will now officially continue as before. It seems that not enough common ground could be met during the talks on which the opposing sides could hope to broker a deal.
Am I cynical enough to wager that Japan thought their long term benefit would be best served if the talks failed? Did they orchestrate the failure of the IWC talks, whilst the conservation lobby walked away thinking they might have scored a victory?
Hmmmmm I need a few more coffees before I try to answer that one. In the meanwhile, click on over to Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Blog that is usually about shark conservation but, but they have currently made space for a little Whale Discussion.

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