Many Overlooked Shark Species May Be Dying Off
- 10 years ago
David Ebert has, over the years, identified many new shark species. The problem is that some of them seem to have disappeared from the wild.
David Ebert of the Pacific Shark Research Center at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California has, over the years, identified many new shark species.
The problem is that some of them seem to have disappeared from the wild.
Often times in his research, Ebert uses museum specimens for examination rather than locating the actual fish in their natural habitat.
That’s how he made one of his recent species distinctions, a sawshark that had for some time been considered something it wasn’t.
The honeycomb catshark is another that spent much of its time as misidentified and overlooked.
Once it was distinguished in 2006, people went looking for more only to find that nobody’s seen one since the 1970s.
Many more have apparently suffered the same fate, slowly disappearing from the planet without anybody noticing.
Thus, Ebert feels it’s high time people stop focusing on the shark rock stars like the Great White and start giving more attention to some of the others.
He said, "They might be perfectly fine, but nobody's looking for these things at all. I don't want to be sitting around in 10 years and saying, 'We used to see these things, but we don't see them around anymore.'"
David Ebert of the Pacific Shark Research Center at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California has, over the years, identified many new shark species.
The problem is that some of them seem to have disappeared from the wild.
Often times in his research, Ebert uses museum specimens for examination rather than locating the actual fish in their natural habitat.
That’s how he made one of his recent species distinctions, a sawshark that had for some time been considered something it wasn’t.
The honeycomb catshark is another that spent much of its time as misidentified and overlooked.
Once it was distinguished in 2006, people went looking for more only to find that nobody’s seen one since the 1970s.
Many more have apparently suffered the same fate, slowly disappearing from the planet without anybody noticing.
Thus, Ebert feels it’s high time people stop focusing on the shark rock stars like the Great White and start giving more attention to some of the others.
He said, "They might be perfectly fine, but nobody's looking for these things at all. I don't want to be sitting around in 10 years and saying, 'We used to see these things, but we don't see them around anymore.'"