Deep Blue Resort Utila

NASA Tool Helps Track Whale Sharks, Polar Bears

deepblueutila — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:57:05 +0000

This is an article about www.Ecocean.org, a fantastc organization we work with, in fact we were the fist people outside Australia to constantly use this system, the NASA scientist they are talking about is a great guy called Dr Zaven Arzoumanian, and we are very proud to say we were the first people to show him a Whale Shark.

I was with Brad Norman a few weeks ago in Mexico at the 2nd International Whale Shark Conference and there are some great new developments coming so keep watching.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080825-whale-sharks-missions.html

NASA Tool Helps Track Whale Sharks, Polar Bears

John Roach
for National Geographic News

August 25, 2008

Photos of giant whale sharks snapped by vacationing scuba divers and snorkelers are helping scientists track the elusive marine creatures across the oceans.

And the same technique may soon also help researchers track polar bears in Canada, giant Eurasian trout in Mongolia, and ocean sunfish in the Galápagos Islands.

A tourist snaps a photo of a whale shark in Ningaloo Marine Park in western Australia. Snapshots of this species can be uploaded to an online database that analyzes the animal’s skin patterns and determines whether the same shark has been spotted elsewhere.

Biologists have adapted a complex algorithm developed by scientists working for NASA. The original algorithm mapped stars. The new one analyzes photos of whale sharks, identifying each animal’s unique pattern of white spots. The program determines if a particular shark has been seen before by other database users.

The participatory tracking technique is already lending new insight into the biology of whale sharks, according to Brad Norman, a research scientist from Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

The tourist-collected tracking information is helping researchers learn more about where and when the fish migrate and their rate of return to particular areas, Norman said.

For example, at Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia, where the tracking technique was first tested, researchers found some sharks remain near the reef for up to three months.

And the global database of whale shark pictures indicates that some of the giant fish migrate between Mexico, Honduras, and Belize.

“We can use these data to highlight the need for international agreements to protect this threatened species,” said Norman, who is a National Geographic Society emerging explorer, as well as the recipient of funding from the Rolex Awards for Enterprise.

(National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

Tracking Whales and Stars

Whale sharks are the world’s largest living fish species, growing more than 40 feet (12 meters) long. They are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), though little is known about their basic biology, ecology, breeding and migration patterns, and worldwide population size.

In 2000, Norman formed ECOCEAN, a nonprofit marine conservation organization based in Perth, to develop the participatory tracking system to facilitate whale shark studies.

The concept is based on an algorithm originally developed in 1986 to help NASA scientists match disparate images of stars made with instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Each giant whale shark is covered in a unique pattern of white spots, making them hard to miss when they swim by.

“We just adapted that from white spots on a black night sky to white spots on the flank of a whale shark,” said ECOCEAN information architect Jason Holmberg, who lives in Portland, Oregon.

Zaven Arzoumanian, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led the algorithm’s development.

Now, scientists and tourists can upload their whale shark pictures to www.whaleshark.org, an online photo identification database, along with information on where and when each giant fish was sighted.

The algorithm searches through the thousands of whale shark images in the database—currently 16,000 reported from 40 countries—for a match.

If one is found, the submitter will receive an email with a link to the identified shark and a history of its sightings.

So far, more than 1,300 whale sharks have been identified.

“Citizen science,” or involvement by the public, “provides the opportunity for thousands of nonscientists to become involved and make a meaningful contribution to wildlife conservation,” Norman said.

Applied to Other Species

Now that that the technique has been proven with whale sharks and is yielding results, the ECOCEAN team wants to extend it to other species.

In theory, the algorithm is adaptable to any creature with a telltale spot pattern that stays consistent over time. Think cheetahs, manta rays, spotted penguins.

This fall, biologists Jane Waterman and James Roth of the University of Central Florida will begin using the technique to track polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.

The bears, which were recently listed as a threatened species in the U.S., have unique spots at the base of their whiskers. The algorithm is being tweaked to account for the size and placement of each spot.

(Related: Polar Bears Listed as Threatened Species [May 14, 2008])

Churchill is considered the best polar bear viewing site in the world and hosts hundreds of photo-snapping tourists each year.

“We can identify bears from year to year, so we can start looking at ‘Do things change with the bears?’” Waterman said of the possibilities with the citizen-tracking technique.

“Are we seeing the same individuals coming into the area year upon year? Do we see a change in how long they stay in the tourist area? There are a lot of questions you can ask, if the technology works,” she said.

National Geographic Emerging Explorer Tierney Thys has expressed interest in adapting the technique to her research on ocean sunfish, also known as mola.

One population of mola, the world’s heaviest bony fish, resides in the Galápagos Islands and is photographed nearly every week by an underwater camera on a cruise ship.

Thys has secured access to those images and with Norman plans to look for identifiable markers that can be used for tracking.

“It would be a noninvasive way of answering questions about the sunfish in the Galápagos. For example, we could start to decipher if this is a resident population or not,” she said.

Another emerging explorer, Zeb Hogan of the Megafishes Project, thinks the technique could be useful for tracking giant Eurasian trout.

“They have spotting on their head that doesn’t appear to change as they age, which is the necessary requirement to use the technique,” he said.

Catch-and-release fishing is thriving in Mongolia, where tourists flock to hook giant trout. Upon success, the tourists pose for a photo with their fish before releasing it.

Hogan and colleagues plan to compile a database of ten years’ worth of snapshots of people holding their catch.

“Rather than having people diving with these giant sharks, we have people fishing for giant trout,” he said. “It’s pretty much exactly the same thing.”

Amazing Whale Shark News

deepblueutila — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:21:35 +0000

Here is an article about Dr Eric Hoffmayer who has been working closely with Deep Blue Resort www.DeepBlueUtila.com and Utila Whale Shark Research www.UtilaWhaleSharkResearch.com and was here at Deep Blue in our Whale Shark Research period in 2008.

Dr Eric Hoffmayer is also working with Dr Rachel Graham who has been instrumental in getting acoustic tags and receivers to us here in Utila to use, we are hoping that Eric will be able to come and visit us again soon.

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/news/stories/2008/08/15/whale_sharks_gatherings.html

This is the article from the Atlanta Journal

Huge gatherings of whale sharks discovered in Gulf of Mexico

Scientists believe whale sharks regularly congregate off Mississippi and Louisiana coasts

By JIM THARPE

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Friday, August 15, 2008

Scientists have become increasingly convinced that huge gatherings of giant whale sharks occur with clockwork regularity in the northern Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Scientist Eric Hoffmayer, who is trying to unravel the mysterious “aggregations,” said that as many as 100 of the bus-sized sharks have been spotted feeding in clusters at three separate areas about 40 to 100 miles offshore.

We have lots of reports of 30 or 50 animals in one place,” said Hoffmayer, a scientist with the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Miss. “They are obviously gathering for a reason. But right now we are not sure what that is, or how they know to show up at these spots.”

Whale sharks, a key attraction at the Georgia Aquarium, are the planet’s biggest shark and can grow to more than 45 feet long. They are generally solitary, ocean-roaming creatures. Nobody knows how many exist. But there are a handful of locations around the globe where the polka-dotted, filter-feeding sharks congregate in large numbers to feast on plankton or fish eggs.

The northern Gulf aggregations, which occur from June through September, would be a major new discovery if scientists can confirm that they are occurring at regular, predictable intervals.

Hoffmayer recently discussed his findings with Georgia Aquarium researchers at the Second International Whale Shark Conference on Isla Holbox, Mexico. The downtown Atlanta aquarium is funding whale shark research in the plankton-rich waters off Holbox, a narrow strip of land alongside the Yucatan Peninsula north of Cancun that attracts hundreds of whale sharks each summer in one of the world’s largest aggregations.

Bruce Carlson, the aquarium’s chief science officer, said aquarium researchers are just beginning to talk with Hoffmayer and his associates about their findings. The aquarium is the only fish tank outside Asia to house whale sharks.

“There is already collaboration in terms of information sharing, and there will probably be more in the future,” Carlson said.

Confirming the aggregations is a difficult task. Scientists are confronted with a species that can wander across oceans solo, then suddenly appear in large groups to feed.

Hoffmayer enlists the help of fishermen, oil rig workers and pilots. He asks them to report the time, date and duration of whale sharks sightings, recording the sharks’ GPS coordinates and the number and size of sharks they see.

His group has created its own whale shark Web page, http://www.usm.edu/gcrl/whaleshark connected to his lab’s Web site, where whale shark observers can record their sightings. Hoffmayer’s group also has tagged a few whale sharks with satellite transmission devices.

Florida-based shark scientist Robert Hueter, whose Holbox research is partially funded by the aquarium, said he is intrigued by the northern Gulf aggregations and thinks they could somehow be related to the sharks he has observed off Holbox.

Hueter and his assistants, John Tyminski and Mexico-based biologist Rafael de la Parra, have placed about 700 visual tags on whale sharks off the Yucatan over the last few years. Those plastic identification tags let scientists know where the sharks were first spotted and — if they are resighted — where they travel to.

“None of the tags have been resighted in the northern Gulf,” Hueter said. “That doesn’t mean none of the sharks have traveled there. The tags could have been shed or they might not have been seen. But after tagging 700, you think they’d have spotted something up there.”

Hueter said one whale shark tagged off Holbox with a satellite transmitting device did move northwest from the Yucatan to an area off the Texas Coast. Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at Sarasota’s Mote Marine Laboratory, said he envisions future collaboration with Hoffmayer on his findings.

“When you talk about a species that travels thousands of miles and knows no political boundaries, collaboration between scientists is essential,” Hueter said.

Hoffmayer’s work has been mostly a labor of love, since he does not have a consistent funding source for his whale shark research. “It’s piecemeal,” he said.

He theorizes the big sharks get together in the northern Gulf to dine on massive concentrations of fish eggs; bonita, skipjack and tuna spawn in the area. Like Hueter, he believes the northern Gulf gatherings could somehow be connected to whale shark aggregations near Holbox, which occur at roughly the same time of year.

The Holbox whale sharks have spawned a booming ecotourism business for the small island, where fisherman have learned how to turn a buck hauling tourists offshore to snorkel with the gentle giants. Whale shark aggregations also have created ecotourism businesses in Australia, the Philippines, Belize and a few other locales.

So far, however, the northern Gulf whale shark gatherings are known only to a few scientists, pilots, charter boat captains and oil rig workers who have glimpsed the natural phenomenon far from the sight of land.

A boat approaching one of the aggregations on a calm day would probably first see the dorsal fins and huge tails of the sharks sticking out of the water. The sharks swim slowly and quietly near the surface, their huge mouths agape to take in tons of seawater from which they collect the tiny marine organisms and fish eggs they eat.

Occasionally, the sharks feed vertically, which means they stop in one spot and angle their bodies at 45-degrees, sucking in water near the surface and hoovering in their tiny prey.

Hoffmayer said that until recently scientists believed whale shark encounters in the northern Gulf were rare. In 2002, he said, scientists discovered two whale sharks in a school of yellowfin, blackfin and skipjack tuna.

“We wanted to know what the whale sharks were doing in a school of tuna,” he said.

Hoffmayer asked some local offshore fishermen if they had ever encountered whale sharks. Their answer stunned him.

“They said, ‘We see whale sharks all the time,”’ he recalled. “These guys see a lot of stuff out there, and they never think to contact us, and we had not been contacting them.”

Hoffmayer published a 2005 paper on the initial sightings and has continued to gather evidence to support his theory, enlisting fishermen and helicopter pilots who serve the Gulf’s 3,500 oil rigs.

Hoffmayer said that in 2006 a tuna fishing boat returned with video of 100 or so whale sharks it happened upon in the northern Gulf. That was two weeks after Hoffmayer and his researchers encountered a group of 16 whale sharks in the same area.

“A third of our sightings are of groups of animals,” he said. “We had a sighting of 30 or so a few weeks ago off the coast of Texas.”

One theory, Hoffmayer said, is that the whale sharks are initially widely dispersed in the northern Gulf, lazily feeding on plankton.

But, he said, they might somehow know when to congregate in fish spawning areas, where they would be able to gorge on nutrient-rich eggs.

Many fish species spawn on certain phases of the moon’s cycle, Hoffmayer said.

Perhaps the big sharks are guided by the lunar phases. But like many things about whale sharks, no one really knows.

“How do 30 animals know to show up for what is a 12-hour [spawning] event?” he asked. “Now that’s a wonderful mystery. It’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Swimming Frogfish

deepblueutila — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:49:49 +0000

Here is a great short video clip of a Frogfish in Utila swimming, just click on the link and it should open in a new window for you to see, it may take a few seconds to download but well worth it.

frog-fish3

Another great group trip

deepblueutila — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 15:07:15 +0000

It’s Saturday and we have just said goodbye to another group trip of 20 people who we had a great time with, it was a fantastic weeks diving with lots of fun times.

Unfortunately this week there were no Whale Sharks but great weather and good visability made for some brilliant diving with all sorts of wonderful and weird creatures.

August and September is normally good weather with flat calm seas and some of the best visibility in the caribbean.

I thought I would also post a photo that was taken this week at the resort of one of our resident Humming birds.

Diving Rebels Photo Contest

deepblueutila — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:37:30 +0000

This week we have a dive club from Texas called Diving Rebels www.DivingRebels.org a great fun group of people who decided to have a photo contest with six catorgories split into two sections and a top prize of a $200 gift certificate from Scuba Toys www.ScubaToys.com

The catorgories were

Underwater Section, Creative and / or Humorous, Macro, Fish or Marine Animal Portrait

Terrestrial Section, Beach, Sunset / Sunrise, Nature and Wildlife

Here are the first three in every section.

Fish or Marine Animal Portrait

1st Place Wren Tidwell

2nd Place Mark Estill

3rd Place Steve Ogden

Macro

1st Place Steve Ogden

2nd Place Steve Ogden

3rd Place Jill Bouska

Creative / Humorous

1st Place Jill Bouska

2nd Place Steve Ogden

3rd Place Jill Bouska

In the terestrial section

Sunset / Sunrise

1st Place Jill Bouska

2nd Place Mark Estill

3rd Place Steve Ogden

Nature and Wildlife

1st Place Paula Boyet

2nd Place Mark Estill

3rd Place Paula Boyet

Beach

1st Place Paula Boyett

2nd Place Mark Estill

3rd Place Steve Ogden

And we had to give a special award from Deep Blue to Mark Estill because of his Whale Shark photo, a great shot in a day where the Diving Rebels saw 4 Whale Sharks a Manta and Pilot Whales wooow does it get any better.

Lastly Deep Blue Resort would like to thank the Diving Rebels for being such a great crowd, and we hope to see you all again soon.

Photos of the Month

deepblueutila — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:30:32 +0000

Hi All

Deep Blue Resort would like to thank Larry C who was staying with us last week to use his photos here, a very special photo is of the Moon Snail, these are quite rare here, I do not know of another one that has been photographed on the island of Utila.

Photo 1 Gaudy Natica Moon Snail

Photo 2 Longsnout Seahorse

Photo 3 Shortnose Batfish

Photo 4 Whale Shark

Photo 5 Haliburton Wreck

Amazing Whale Shark news

deepblueutila — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:31:20 +0000

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25243866/from/ET/wid/18298287/>1=45002

Monster sharks ‘fly’ like fighter pilots

‘It is like the way a bird dives, then soars, using its momentum and gravity’

Monster sharks can execute underwater ‘flight’ moves that would have put some fighter pilots to shame, two researchers announced this week.

Normally seen cruising slowly at the surface, the whale shark, which does not harm humans, can transform in the deep, hurling itself into a swift, steep dive like a pilot, soaring up and then down again in a series of great bounds, said researcher Rory Wilson of Swansea University in the Wales.

Whale sharks are the world’s biggest fish. They are not whales or mammals.

“It is like the way a bird dives, then soars, using its momentum and gravity to conserve as much energy as possible. It flies like a bird — but in this case, a bird as large as a bus!” Wilson said. Such behavior has never been observed in a fish before, he said.

Brad Norman / LiveScience

Marine scientists swam alongside the whale sharks in Australia’s Ningaloo Reef to study Credit: Brad Norman

Wilson worked with Brad Norman of Australia’s Murdoch University to track whale sharks in the Indian Ocean, off Ningaloo, on Australia’s western coast. The team equipped several whale sharks with an electronic device that records in minute detail — eight times a second — the giant creature’s every action, including speed, depth, pitch, roll and heading, along with every beat of the fish’s tail.’For the first time, we have an insight into what it is that these magnificent creatures get up to when they are out of sight of humans — and it isn’t what we expected,’ said Norman, who received a Rolex Award in 2006 for his project employing ‘citizen scientists’ worldwide to help study and protect whale sharks through an online global photo ID library.

Rolex Awards / Juergen Freund / LiveScience

Brad Norman attaches a ‘daily diary’ device to a whale shark. Rory Wilson swims behind him.

‘It’s a real Jekyll-and-Hyde existence,’ said Wilson of the contrasting behaviors of the sharks revealed by his electronic wildlife monitor. The device is helping to reveal details of the lives of more than 50 animal species in the wild, a project that won Wilson a Rolex Award, also in 2006.The devices were attached in late May to eight sharks up to 26 feet (8 meters) long off Ningaloo. The devices are designed to release from the sharks and can be recovered by tracking them. The recovered data documented every move of the giant fish over several hours.

Eventually, the devices could reveal how and where whale sharks feed and breed, enabling those localities to protect the giant fish from human impacts such as hunting or pollution.

Cuviers Beaked Whale

deepblueutila — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:46:04 +0000

Hi All

Unfortunately this Cuviers Beaked Whale was washed up on the shore at the public beach in Utila a couple of months ago then a few days later a small one was also washed up.

Whale Shark researchers, researchers researchers everywhere

deepblueutila — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:18:11 +0000

Hi All

Todays picture is of myself (Steve Fox), in the blue shirt driving the boat, Isabelle Foisy, in black, which is normal for her, who works for us during Whale Shark season and also Dr Rachel Graham’s Marine Meganet acoustic tagging program and we are with Jose Francisco Remolina Suarez, with his leg up on the side of the boat, or as we all know him better Paco ,,,,it much shorter and easier to remember LOL and Rafael de la Parra in the red and gray shirt, who both run the Whale Shark research in Holbox Mexico, they are doing some great work there with the Domino Project, and helping Deep Blue Resort and www.UtilaWhaleSharkResearch.com here in Utila

We had all been out on the small boat spotting Whale Sharks for the resort guests who were on the Walnut the main dive boat.

You can click on all photos to enlarge them.

Photo Of The Day

deepblueutila — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:06:54 +0000

Hi All

Here is a great photo taken from Deep Blue Resort in Utila at Sunrise, now I know why I live here !!!!

The photo was taken by David Ulloa who is a film maker and was staying at the resort to film the Whale Sharks, what better sight than this could greet you when you are doing an early morning shore dive.

Was it a Whale Shark or wasn’t it ????

deepblueutila — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:12:28 +0000

Which of these photos taken in Utila do you think is the real one ???? Click on photos to enlarge and you will see what I mean.

Photo by David Ulloa

To all visitors to the Deep Blue Website

admin — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:00:50 +0000

Hi to all the people who are visiting our site this is a new blog site that we are using and we will be putting posts up very soon, also you will see on our site a new message board as our old one was hacked and we could no longer use it.

We are just setting everything up on our new site at the moment and hope that all will be back to normal soon.

Steve