Great White population surge

I'm not a Marine Biologist, and in terms of what I know ecologically I know least about fish/ocean ecosystems...but my guess would be that w/out sharks, their prey populations would grow and have a trickle down effect depleting populations of smaller critters, down to krill...just a quick .02...

 

I think another thing to consider is just b/c GW pops seem to be ok, notice what the article said about the other 200 species of sharks...obviously the GW thing catches our attention first.

 

well you're talking about laws of men and laws of nature. take a way the laws of men and you would still see rises and falls of both populations as well as falls of other specieces as the sharks prey on other things when the seal meat runs low. add the laws of men and it just confuses everything. too many sharks? kill the sharks. now we have too many seals. kill the seals. there are no more seals or sharks. stop killing seals and sharks. now we have too many seals and too may sharks. lets create a zombie super seal that can kill sharks. now we have a zombie super seal problem. better creat a zombie super shark. uh oh call tara reid and that guy from 90210 we got problems!

 

This is because we are penny wise and pound foolish....

Let's protect all the White Sharks, and sacrifice the population of 200 other species... Makes no sense...

The shark at the top of the food chain is protected, while we are fishing for every other kind of shark in the world without regulation, and now the big boys are in abnormally high numbers, eating up all the food supply and probably a lot of the smaller sharks....

If we had never fished them, or touched them, everything would be normal...

But the solution = FISH AND EAT ALL SHARKS, or fish and eat no sharks...

It's pretty hypocritical for us to decide to help one species to 200 other species demise.

Fish for sharks, any sharks, or don't....

That's like saying in South Carolina, you can hunt, kill and eat rat snakes, garden snakes and most snakes, but YOU CANNOT TOUCH the diamond backs, rattles, copperheads....

Makes no sense. Lets deplete the harmless ones, while filling our waters with the dangerous one... smart.

 

think of it this way. no sharks to feed on seals? seal pop grows and eats all the fish. cost of fish rise becuase of lack of supply and the cost of catching fish with out hurting seals increases( humanity will never allow for a seal cull as they're too cute).

best way to cull an apex is to remove the food supply. seal burgers.

 

Eat the seals too. That's what I am saying. We should not regulate the way that we do. Half the food we eat every day come from "cute animals"...

Now if guys just roll up on the beach with spear guns in La Jolla and massacre 100 seals in front of a crowd at the children's pool, I could see it being an issue.

But if it's in the ocean, and it will take the bait, catch it, eat it.

It's funny how we think it is our right to decide what species get to live and die. Whales. Seals. Whites... I mean, these are first world problems.... We need to get off our high horse.

 

Like, I catch Black Tips all the time. I can only keep the ones over 5 feet. There are other sharks, IDENTICAL to blacktips, that you can keep and eat of any size. Why? There are blacktips EVERYWHERE around here. What good does it do for us to regulate them? Yet, if I catch 10 other species, I can eat them.... I mean, you literally have to have a manual downloaded to your phone. Every little shark or fish you catch, you have to look it up... Can I keep it... Ohh, I guess not. Ohh, my red fish is over 26 inches, gotta throw it back. Cause that makes sense...

Such Bull****.

 

only problem is the seals are loaded with mercury and PCB's which would help cull earths biggest problem. Us.

 

Again, both species are definitely dependent on each other.

Seals and sea lions were killed by commercial fisherman, because they were a huge nuisance. They would often disturb, steal or kill the fisherman's catch.

Sharks were killed for the same purpose, but most often were killed by the use of gill nets used for the commercial harvest of other fish.

It's possible that sharks dwindled in numbers due to the amount of seals that were eliminated, but science proves that both species, without protection, were adversely affected. All I know is that the waters were a lot safer to surf, even at the most notorious spots. Heck, can anybody remember a single Great White attack in Oregon during the 60's, 70's or 80's? Maybe Lew Boren in 1981 near Monterey, but that's about it....and that was in the heart of the Red Triangle, for gawds sake.

But it's not just Great Whites. For sure, Tigers and Bulls (sharks, of course) are *way* more aggressive. I don't want to exclude those from the nuisance list.

Nobody could ever explain to me why Earth needs fleas, flies, mosquitoes or cockroaches either.

 

True that. Like I said, best thing to do is treat everything equally. Fish it, eat it. If seals are no good, throw em back. Over population of seals can't do anything worse to the ecosystem than an over population of great whites.

 

Maybe we could send the meet to super densely populated areas? And China of course.

I often wonder the same about ticks. I mean, with skeeters I get it that bats, birds, frogs, and all these other guys need a stable, abundant food supply. But wtf eats ticks(besides guinea hens)? And what do they contribute?

Man as far as sharks, the thought of Tigers and Bulls bothers me more than Crackers.

 

Can't argue with that.

"Crackers", LOL!!! That's a keeper.

 

ha ha ha hoo hoo hoo

 

Hahaha has a nice ring eh? I can't take credit though I borrowed that from the Jetty Bear.


ATANTICOO you're right about that, I've even seen dolphins in Long Island Sound(only once, but hey)...it's a shame it's about to all go to sh!t.

 

That's gotta be it...makes perfect sense.

 

Speaking of which, those little fu**ers are still giving me hell down here. I see/have one on me once a day anywhere near the yard. I am spraying this weekend. I already treated the dog months ago... But I was inside our clubhouse, for my daughters 3rd bday party this past sunday. I had been there for hours, all the sudden, I am in the kitchen pouring a drink and there is a f'ing tick on my arm... Fu**er must have been crawling on me for hours and finally materialized.

I have been looking online. They say ticks can't jump or fly, but like I said, I will be at my slider, 30 yards from the palm forest in my back yard. On concrete with 15 feet of overhang and as soon as I step outside, one will just appear on their body. I look up, don't see sh**.... I don't know whats going on....

My google search showed a map, saying that SC is in the very low risk zone for Lyme.... But the ticks here are tiny, maybe 1/8th - 1/4 inch in diameter, jet black, symmetrical legs. The pictures online are all zoomed in and look brown. I am assuming they are "wood ticks".....

But I just can't figure out how risky these things are... They typically say not to worry about lyme around here, but this sucks. Maybe I should have bought a house in my neighborhood that wasn't up against the woods, but I loved having the palm and oak forest out back. Its a sweet environment, but it looks like I need to enclose my whole back patio, with sliders or french doors and just not step foot out there all summer... Its a same, cause its a sweet area. So peaceful and quiet back there. Winter and spring is dope. Summer, not so much.

 

Dude that's nuts...I know nothing of ticks really, so this is speculative, but maybe you're near some breeding area or something...the one consolation with Lyme is that if you get that sucker out within 24 hours you're good. I don't think I'd survive a summer in the South...you get some gnar gnar spiders down there?

 

My first exposure to ticks was when I was living about a block away from Washout at Folly. I'd just rocked up about a day earlier, and my pet cat that I dragged out (a 5 day drive) had a monster of a tick near his shoulder.

Being a city boy from far away, I was clueless. I asked my hick newlywed wife (a real bumpkin) what we should do. Of course, she was young and was always quick with the "I don't know, I don't know" response (now she knows everything, right?). Then she recalled someone in her family having a tick previously, and that they smothered it with Vaseline like a Southerner smothers his Waffle House taters.

Slathered that thing down, and found the tick tapping out on the floor about 45 minutes later. Stepping on that thing was like stepping on a stone. Lots of blood. Cool.