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….

Sealion

Some dogs chase cars, some chase bikes, others chase… sea lions? Yes, it appears that some dogs don’t limit the things they chase to just things on land apparently.

It seems a dog needed to be rescued after chasing a sea lion for over four kilometers out to sea in Southern Australia.

The dog, a crossbreed named Westie, was out taking a walk with his master along the beach when he suddenly took off into the water after a sea lion and simply refused to come back, the Portside Messenger reported.

Soon the sea lion and Westie were out of sight, somewhere over the horizon as the sea lion led Westie farther and farther from the shore, leaving his owner feeling helpless.

Craig Van Tenac, a Semaphore Surf Life Saving Club captain, was part of the efforts to rescue Westie.

“I’d say it was four kilometers offshore – that dog swam forever,” he commented when asked about what happened.

Westie apparently was having a good time, frolicking around and rubbing his nose against the sea lion, who was busy rolling about playfully in the water, he continued.

Despite Westie’s amazing stamina, Van Tenac commented that he had his doubts that Westie, who had been chasing after the sea lion for more than an hour, could have possibly made it back to shore.

He continued to say that Westie’s owner was very much relieved that he came back to the shore safe and sound, and no worse for wear.

Don Battle / WildRescue

Now this is just plain odd, cruel, and inhumane… A wildlife group has been made aware of a strange and brutal incident going on in the San Francisco Bay Area.. Someone has been going around and putting cut beer cans around the necks of seagulls!

They have stepped up, and said the person, or persons, responsible must be caught, and have even thrown in a $2,000 bounty.. Though they have not released if it was a “Dead or Alive” bounty…

It was reported by the WildRescue of Monterey, California that two such birds have been seen wandering around Half Moon Bay, Fisherman’s Wharf and Alcatraz Island.

The group has pleaded that the public be on the lookout for more of the poor creatures:

“Instead of attempting to capture the birds, which can make them more wary and harder to catch, sightings should be reported immediately to a dedicated paging service 831-429-2323 or emailed to rescue@wildrescue.org,” the group put out.

WildRescue has commented that it has also alerted the U.S> Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This is a federal crime punishable by severe fines, imprisonment, or both,” explained WildRescue’s spokeswoman, Rebecca Dmytryk.

The $2,000 reward, it is hoped, will help to give some added incentive for finding the people responsible.

“I feel pretty confident that if word gets around, we’ll be able to find the birds and help them,” Dmytryk commented.

So there you have it.. Whoever you are, your “beer can collar” days are coming to an end…

The caught shark

Just as a deep sea fisherman was about to cut away a hook from a wide open mouth of a shark to let it go back on its merry way to the sea, the most surprising thing sprung forth.. A human foot.

“Everything was intact from the knee down,” commented Humphrey Simmons, a Bahamian investment banker, “it was mangled, but there was still flesh on the bone.”

What a morbid way to end such a beautiful day of fishing for Mr. Simmons and his two cohorts, who spent the majority of their morning trying to get away from the sea beasts.

When they finally managed to reel in the curiously heavy and bulging Tiger shark, at the Defence Force’s Coral Harbor base and they got around to sticking a knife in him, to see what was what, a headless body came tumbling out of the freshly opened cavity. The leg which the shark so unceremoniously coughed up appeared to belong to the man, as he too was missing a foot. Upon closer examination of the sharks insides, they indeed found the rest of the man; severed right leg, two severed arms and a torso in two sections.

As Mr Simmons’ ten year old daughter calmly pointed out, the shark had the feast all to himself. There were no signs of a struggle, or fighting from other sharks. The theory going around now is that the unlucky man drowned, and then was scarfed up by the shark.

Picture by Mr Krugersky

In a strange turn of events, a fisherman was left speechless after an enterprising frog hopped into his net, and proceeded to swallow his hard earned fish whole.

It appears the clever little creature had been biding his time, waiting for the fisherman to catch something before jumping in there and stealing away the prize.

The amateur fisherman, Valery Krugersky, was minding his own business and trying to relax in a lake just on the outskirts of the town of Chernigov, Ukraine.

Valery ingeniously makes use of an old curtain as a net, and was completely flabbergasted to see the frog hop out of the water and take what was rightfully his.

The frog, which was just a tad over six inches long, swallowed the catch whole, and then sat with a smug look upon his face, having had its fill.

All the hapless Mr. Krugersky could do was pull out his camera, and photograph the peculiar sight.

An engineer by trade, Mr. Krugersky had this to say: “I have seen a big pike jump in the net and eat the fish before but never a frog.”

There were a multitude of frogs milling about the lake, making boatloads of noise, however this frog made his way away from the crowd to jump into the make-shift net and eat the catch in mere seconds.

“I left the net in the lake and the frog just sat inside it for a long time making some noise.”

This just goes to show… Never leave your net unattended for even a second, you never know who might just be eying your prize.

Orange lobster - Picture Birmingham sealife center

So what exactly is so strange about an orange lobster? It’s actually living! Normally, lobsters are a brownish-green color when they are alive, and they turn orange when they have been cooked. That being the case, a strange live reddish-orange lobster has been sighted in the UK.

The lobster, which hails from North America, has been aptly named “Gumbo”. Gumbo is so rare that he was saved from becoming dinner, and was plunked down into a new home at the Birmingham National Sea Life Center.

Before making his way to the Sea Life Center, Gumbo was staying at the Natural History Museum I London. The museum was made aware of the rare find by fishmonger Rex Goldsmith. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years in this business,” Rex commented.

Paul Clark, a crustacean researcher at the museum, was simply flabbergasted by extraordinary color of the carapace and agreed to aid Rex in finding a more suitable home for the lobster. “I was able to set up a saltwater tank here at the Museum to keep him alive until Sea Life agreed to take him and arrange collection.” Paul explained.

The shells of lobsters generally have red, yellow, and blue pigments which give them their brownish-green color when they are still alive.

The lobsters’ diet consists of shrimp, algae and other sea animals which contain cartenoid pigments.

These pigments are what give lobsters their color, and when they are cooked they break down and give them that “red” look.

Now this is an interesting development! Two female zebra sharks, located at the Vinpearland Park Nha Trang, laid eggs without the need for male sharks! After a long wait of 5 months of incubating the eggs, the very first unisex baby shark was born!

Zebra Shark Pup

The tank where the two female sharks have made their home for the past year has no male sharks in it. However, the first female shark, much to the surprise of the keepers, laid her eggs and a baby shark was born near the end of June.

The Oceanography Institute researchers in Nha Trang have explained that this is a very rare occurrence in nature and this is the very first time that a unisex shark has made an appearance in Vietnam. Not to be outdone by her tank partner, the second female shark laid close to a dozen eggs, of which over half of them didn’t have citellus. The others with citellus can actually develop embryos, and, with great excitement, the scientists at the Vinpearland Park are incubating these eggs to see what develops.

An expert at the Oceanography Institute has shed some light on the aspects of asexual reproduction. They explained that asexual reproduction occurs when the eggs develop an embryo without any interaction, or contact with sperm from a male. This is rather common in the insect world, however it is extremely rare is fish and reptile species, and has never been seen before in any kind of mammal. “Until now sharks have not been listed as animals with asexual reproduction. This phenomenon has only been recorded once in the US and only a few times around the word. We need to perform a DNA test to verify what happened,” the scientist continued.

The sea holds many mysteries for us, one of which was the mating habits of the deep sea squid. This mystery has now been unraveled, as scientists have discovered a male squid with a humongous elongated penis.

The male squid’s penis is almost as long as its entire body, making it one of the oceans’ studliest creatures…

With this discovery, it really comes as no surprise to learn how the male deep-sea squid impregnates females of the species. He simply uses his well hung penis to shoot out blobs of sperm, which then make their way into the female’s body.

This discovery may also shed some light on just exactly why these giant squid mate in the depths of the ocean.

Dr. Alexander Arkhipkin, a deep-water fisheries expert of the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department, has explained how he and his team made this momentous discovery, “The mature male squid was caught during a deep-water research cruise on the Patagonian slope. We took the animal from the catch, and it was moribund with arms and tentacles still moving, and chromatophores on the skin contracting and expanding. When the mantle of the squid was opened for maturity assessment, we witnessed an unusual event. The penis of the squid, which had extended only slightly over the mantle margin, suddenly started to erect, and elongated quickly to 67cm total length, almost the same length as the whole animal.”

This sudden arousal of the deep-sea squid specimen really took the scientific team by surprise, however, it did help us solve the age old mystery of just how exactly deep-sea squid procreate.

All cephlapods are hard put to actually “get down to business” as their bodies are comprised of a closed hood-type feature, which forms a cephalopods body and head.

The creatures utilize this hood-type feature to move about in the water, and they need to ventilate to breathe, to top it off, they also hide their sexual organs inside this structure!

Shallow water cephalopods got around this problem by developing an arm to go about the task.

Their penises are short and produce smaller blobs of sperm, and then one of their available appendages is then used to transfer this sperm into receptacles located on the female of the species.

The actual location of these receptacles varies, and is either on their skin, or internal.

However, the deep-water male squid have a much more direct method, which was just injecting the sperm right into the waiting female. This was the giant mystery, as up until now, the general assumption was that these deep-sea squid had penis sizes comparable to other squid.

However, it appears that not all squid are created equal, and unlike their small penis bearing brethren, they have developed a huge cannon for the job of impregnating the females.

The squid uses his impressive member to actually reach inside the female, and inject the sperm directly to where it needs to go, to prevent it from being washed away.

However, how the sperm actually gets to the female’s reproductive organs, is still shrouded in mystery.

According to China Daily, a male visitor to a hot spring club has had his external reproductive organs nibbled on by fish.

The man, who visited a Dalian spa in China’s Liaoning province, received a treatment where fish is used to clean the skin of spa visitors. These fish normally eat dead tissue only, but for reasons that remain unknown they started to nibble on the man’s private parts.

The damage wasn’t discovered until the injured spa guest exited the bath and the manager of the club noticed that the man was bleeding. The guest was promptly rushed to a nearby hospital to receive treatment for his unusual wound.

The nibbled on spa guest will not be compensated since he violated the club rule about always wearing swimming trunks during spa treatments.

We have not been able to confirm this story so it might be an Urban legend that made it into the China daily.

A moray eel species native to warm tropical waters have been caught in the considerably colder waters found off the coast of Cornwall, UK. (picture here)

After catching the 4 feet (120 cm) long fish, West Penwith fishermen brought it to the Newlyn Fish Market auction where it was purchased by fish dealer John Payne of Marisco Fish in Penzance.

”I thought it shouldn’t be there, realised it was rare and it shouldn’t be swimming in these waters so I decided to buy it. It is a one off and first of its kind found in these waters”, said Payne who plans to stuff the eel and keep it in his shop.

Rory Goodall of Cornwall Wildlife Trust has never heard of a tropical moray eel being caught this far north before. “They are not rare in the Mediterranean but I have never heard of them being seen here so it’s possible that they have never been caught in the British waters before”, he said.

Moray eel of the species Gymnothorax meleagris.
Copyright www.jjphoto.dk.