🦈 #shark #depredation A new study out of Mote Marine Laboratory suggests a small electronic device could help solve a frustrating problem for anglers... sharks successfully took the bait 92% of the time when the device was off — but only 46% of the time when it was on. baynews9.com/fl/tampa/new...

Let's get this straight. Adani donates $600k the Qld LNP before election. After the election, Qld LNP ends legal action over $400 MILLION in unpaid royalties. Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy. Thread. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Underwater cameras reveal the behaviours and interactions of marine wildlife around demersal shark fishing gear. We saw an overall low incidence of detrimental (gear capture) marine wildlife interactions authors.elsevier.com/a/1mZKbbiU28...

🦈 Ep 3 Athletes of the Reef is out! New research led by Joel Gayford shows tonic immobility isn’t universal in sharks - for some species, “playing dead” may be a fatal mistake. 🎙️ Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/05xT... 📄 Paper: doi.org/10.1007/s111... #SharkScience #MarineBiology 📸 Rachel Moore

📢 We are seeking Expressions of Interest for the role of ASFB Newsletter Editor 🐟🦈🐠 🔗For more details and how to apply: tinyurl.com/3ussu7vv

The teeth of white sharks are not static weapons but living records of a shark’s changing lifestyle.

Timeline cleans with snowflake-sized baby lagoon jellyfish. . 🎥 jelliesfarm www.instagram.com/jelliesfarm?...

What’s driving the decline? The crisis isn’t just fishing — it’s invisible fishing. Much shark & ray catch is under-reported, aggregated, or mislabeled, masking real mortality & delaying management. What we don’t measure, we don’t manage. @cgmull.bsky.social @nathanpacoureau.bsky.social

New paper out today in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com by the #GlobalSharkTrends team: Bending back the curve of shark & ray biodiversity loss; Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ9n9 @sfu.ca @sfubiosciences.bsky.social @earth2ocean.bsky.social

Oh noooooooooooo...

Culls have been happening to the point bull shark populations are more likely to be declining along coasts than increasing. What's more, we have plenty of evidence that short of eliminating sharks (which would cost a fortune!), culls won't reduce shark bites at all.

Shark culls have been happening in QLD & NSW, for decades, through shark nets & drumlines. They're diabolical for sharks & other wildlife, including whales, dolphins, dugongs & sea turtles. They do stuff all to improve safety, but education does! 👉 www.sharksmart.nsw.gov.au/staying-safe

Yet another reason (other than sharks) to stay out of the water for a little longer...

Healthy and sustainable fisheries have lower carbon emissions and fuel use, because fish are more abundant and easier to catch with less effort. Rebuilding fisheries and ensuring that fleet sizes are appropriate for catch level, are keys for CO2 reduction By Hilborn et al. doi.org/10.1111/faf....

You've basically answered your own question! Hawaii ran the largest culling program in history (over 5,000 sharks killed) and it had no measurable effect on shark bites. Essentially the same here in Australia, we've been culling sharks (with shark nets) for 70 years and hasn't made a dent.

Chief reason not to go in brackish water like this after heavy rain: it's full of actual poop and other nasty chemicals. It's a one-way ticket to an ear infection, this is on top of the sharks!

No, culling sharks will not lower the risk of bites. We've been culling sharks for 70+ years through the shark control programs, and the evidence we have suggests bull shark numbers are already declining. Very disappointed that a scientist would suggest culling. connectsci.au/mf/article/7...

Here’s @jsresearchpro.bsky.social reporting on ridiculous new ARC grant time-scales (e.g. 16 months for DPs). The ARC “did not respond to questions about the reasons for the length of the delays or on how the changes will affect researchers’ planning”. I reckon they haven’t thought that far ahead.

Three shark bites in Sydney. It's not by chance that this is in January and after the heaviest rainfall since 1988: these two things are known risk factors for the presence of bull sharks in these waters. My thoughts are with the victims and their communities. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Friendly reminder to celebrate your academic accomplishments and milestones more 🙂

You really have to be a marine bio nerd to get this. Male lantern fish are tiny in comparison to the females and latch on to females permanently and become sperm producing sacks. Many males might attach themselves to one female.

More sharks in Tasmania's waters over summer is a distinct possibility.

This is abreal problem. I think I got lucky, but I was just 2 weeks from becoming a motorcycle salesman (I got the job offer 2 weeks after accepting a postdoc). Science shouldn't be this precarious...

"It expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second, it’s 100,000 times softer than Jell-O, and it fends off sharks and Priuses alike." Everyone knows what I am talking about, right?

Study finds that white sharks disappear occasionally from the Neptune Islands (South Africa), not just because of killer whales. That means there's hope they'll be back more often! connectsci.au/wr/article/d...

Reducing vessel speed in key areas can significantly reduce the risk of ship collisions with whales. Bonus: this also helps whale sharks, and also does a lot to reduce emissions near coasts.

Completely unacceptable delays to grant announcements. Such delays undermine industry collaborations, abort promising academic careers (especially of junior researchers) and waste a massive amount of $.

I received a US NSF fellowship (before it got gutted) and turnaround was ~4 months. The European Marie Curie program has a turnaround of ~6 months. Programs servicing MUCH larger populations manage decent timelines. How does the ARC manage to be so inefficient?

NEW PAPER: we used stable isotope analysis to asses the diet and resource use of two endemic Australian ray species - the Estuary Stingray and Common Stingaree @sawsharkman.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/X38XPC...

Soooo AI went from 'will solve cancer' to 'will undress underaged women' in 6 months? Can't say I'm surprised, but is it time our society stopped treating AI like it was going to save us when it's an environmentally damaging erotica bot?

The ARC’s processes are back to being farcical, @jasonclaremp.bsky.social You advocated for a streamlined, efficient, faster ARC, but all that progress has been undone. How can they claim to fund “innovation” with more than a year between initial proposal & outcomes? It should be 6 months, not 16!

This is why we have a new ECR problem in academia. Potential postdocs with the expertise for projects are expected to just wait around for an extra 4 months to find out about a grant? How are we supposed to transition PhDs to research workforce with this sort of uncertainty?!

If the government wants research to work more with industry, they need to sort this out. It's impossible to plan anything with industry partners when you have to tell them its over a year to know whether a grant is successful or not.

⁉️The ARC has delayed outcomes of ALL grants 1–4 months & increased scheduled outcome windows from 2 weeks to 3 months! This reverses 4 years of progress in providing greater certainty & ability to plan for researchers, their families & unis. Their excuse? Security checks under new ARC legislation👇

As the greatest atmospheric polluter on earth exits climate agreements, Jan 6, 2026 becomes the hottest Jan 6th ever recorded in the ERA5 dataset at +1.65ºC above preindustrial. Of course records like this will keep breaking as the steady march to 2ºC and more continues. What a way to start 2026.

Wanna see real-life miracles? Fund scientific research. A team of US scientists just cured Alzheimer’s in mice — and there is now hope that the disease can be reversed in humans. futurism.com/health-medic...

I've waited 3 years to make this post

Replacing all wild-caught fish with agriculture production would require converting land area bigger than the Amazon rainforest into crops. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Christmas cookie cutter shark by Tim Andraka. 🎄

Scientist friends, If you submit a paper for peer review and it gets rejected, consider responding to those comments before you resubmit it elsewhere. Because if you get the same reviewer at the next journal and you totally ignored their feedback, they're now very annoyed with you.

Absolutely horrified at the shooting in Bondi. There is no place for hate in this country, I hope there are serious legislative and behavioural changes at the federal level to ensure this never happens again.

That's a monkfish not a tasseled wobbegong. > The photograph does not show a tasseled wobbegong. Rather, it depicts a goosefish, which is also known as a monkfish or American angler.

Honestly, when will unis and other research orgs collectively say enough is enough, and invoice them for all our unpaid labour that drives publishers MASSIVE profits? The Money in Scientific Publishing danielroelfs.com/posts/the-mo... @danielroelfs.com #KnowledgeSlavery

We knew Ningaloo’s #coral bleaching was severe. But what we found 6 months later was still a shock theconversation.com/we-knew-ning...

"Dead bucket list": great term referring to places we've always wanted to see but have been forever damaged by climate change

I'm so, so tired of reading, reporting on and seeing these results. This was easily one of the prettiest places in the world, forever changed. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"Postdoc in the job market"

Grateful to spend two days on the Klamath watching chinook, liberated by dam removal, return to streams from which they’d been precluded since the Titanic sank. Fish are everywhere, in numbers that stagger the mind & locations that biologists figured would take years to repopulate. Too beautiful.

NEW PAPER: Survival and recovery of three shark species in North-East Atlantic recreational fisheries. academic.oup.com/icesjms/arti... @garzonfrancesco.bsky.social @drmjwitt.bsky.social 🦑🐟🧪🌐🌊🎣