A marine biologist from Sharm El Sheik has blown a conspiracy theory out of the water involving sharks. It appears that some people believe that some shark attacks last week oof the South Sinai resort of Sharm El-Sheikh were orchestrated by the Mossad, in a bid to try and ruin the tourist industry in Egypt. (far fetched isnt it)

A professor of marine biology with the Suez Canal University, Mahmoud Hanafy, has reported to Ahram Online that it is “sad” that an Egyptian national TV station has helped to spread such ludicrous accusations.

Captain Mustafa Ismail, a famous diver from Sharm El Sheik, was seen speaking on “Egypt Today” – a popular public TV show in the area – commenting that the sharks who were involved in the attack were normal ocean sharks and do not reside in the waters of Egypt. He was seen as posing the question then of how the sharks got there.

He went on to comment that they received a report from an Israeli diver in Eilat saying they had discovered a small shark which was implanted with a GPS device. Then the idea was posed these devices were used to track the sharks while they were attacking Egypt.

Hanafy rebutted these accusations, commenting that the Oceanic White Tip – which has been blamed for the attacks – does actually reside in the waters of Egypt. He also added that the use of GPS devices is quite common amongst marine biologists to help study the life in the sea.

It should also be pointed out, that while you can track using a GPS device, you would not be able to “control” the sharks in the same manner..

So, was it a ploy? Not likely. It looks like someone is going to have egg on their face come morning….

Zoology Prof. Yossi Loya at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has discovered that corals changes sex to survive periods of stress, such as high water temperatures. By observing the behaviour of Japanese sea corals he discovered that stressed female mushroom coral (fungiid coral) change gender to become males, and that male corals are much better at handling stress and fare better at surviving on limited resources. Not all females go through his change but many do and most of the population is therefore male during periods of intense stress.

Yossi Loya says: “We believe, as with orchids and some trees, sex change in corals increases their overall fitness, reinforcing the important role of reproductive plasticity in determining their evolutionary success. One of the evolutionary strategies that some corals use to survive seems to be their ability to change from female to male, As males, they can pass through the bad years, then, when circumstances become more favourable, change back to overt females. Being a female takes more energy, males are less expensive to maintain. They are cheaper in terms of their gonads and the energy needed to maintain their bodies. Having the ability to change gender periodically enables a species to maximize its reproductive effort.”

Loya’s discoveries have been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The professor hopes that this new knowledge will help coral farmers by allowing them to reproduce the hardy Fungiid corals more effectively.

Loya has been studying coral reefs for more than 35 years and won the prestigious Darwin Medal for a lifetime contribution to the study of coral reefs. He is also involved in coral rehabilitation projects in the Red Sea and is a professor at the Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The Caspian Sea has traditionally been the world’s main source of caviar, but pollution and overfishing has caused serious problems for the fish in this enormous lake and yields are dwindling at a worrisome pace. The Caspian crisis is now prompting an increasing number of restaurants and importers to switch to Israeli caviar instead.

Sturgeon in pond – Not the facility talked about in the article

In Israel, Ossetra sturgeon (Acipenser persicus / Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) is commercially farmed at the Kibbutz Dan close to the Lebanese border, using eggs imported from the Caspian Sea. Compared to caviar from the Beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), Ossetra caviar – also known as Osetra or Asetra caviar – is firmer in texture and has the most variety in terms of size, color and flavor.

Kibbutz Dan began their Ossetra project in 2003, when caviar prices skyrocketed and made sturgeon roe even more expensive than before. The idea was not primarily to export caviar, but to satisfy the demands of the large Russian-Israeli population, according to Ben Tzvi at Kibbutz Dan. The location of the sturgeon fish farm is well chosen since it can use water from the snow-fed river Dan, a principal source of the river Jordan.

Under normal conditions, a female Ossetra sturgeon will not become sexually mature until she is around 15 years old, but Israeli biologist Avshalom Hurvitz has managed to make female sturgeons commence egg-laying at an age of just 8 or 9 years.

So, is sturgeon roe really kosher? Since the sturgeon is considered a scale-less fish, it is seen as forbidden food according to traditional Jewish dietary laws. However, according to Berta Levavi-Sivan, a scientist at the Hebrew University and a participant in the sturgeon-rearing project, the sturgeon fish is actually equipped with tiny scales – it is has only been considered a scale-less fish because the scales are too small to bee seen with the naked eye.