Hello and welcome back Shark Curious to another episode of
Deep Dives with Sharks. I am the host here.
My name is Alex. For all of you who did not know,
and for those of you who did, good to see you again now.
Also happy Spotify Rap Day to all those who celebrate.
I really cannot thank you all enough for all the listening,
all the sharing. I almost ugly cried on my walk
home from work looking at it. So that was really cool.
But yeah, no, it was. It was a lot of fun to look at
and see how many of you reached out to show me that it was your
your top podcast. The fact that there's over 100
of you who this was the number one podcast for in the fact that
there's over 700 of you who had it in your top ten, it's
completely nuts. And I cannot believe that that
has happened. So I I cannot thank you all
enough. You guys are all amazing and I'm
looking forward to continuing to do this for as long as I don't
run out of sharks. But I also used the polls again
a couple weeks ago after I got a suggestion to watch some shark
movies and talk about how accurate or inaccurate the
creators were with shark behavior and different shark
information. And the good news is that that
episode is coming, but the bad news is that was supposed to be
couple weeks ago and then my schedule changed.
So that will be coming soon and for now we have a regular
episode. But keep an eye out for those.
They'll be coming up, and probably more polls as well.
I'm trying to be more active on social media, of course.
And thank you all for voting, participating, sending all the
messages, questions, recommendations, anything else?
Yeah, follow along on the Instagram at deep dives with
sharks or on Twitter at deep dive sharks to participate more.
All righty. So the shark for this episode is
going to be the Lantern shark, and a lot of the information for
this episode came from oceaninfo.com and
oceanconservancy.org, so check them out if you're looking For
more information. But they are believed to be
about 50 species of Lantern shark depending on who you ask,
which would include the velvet, smooth dwarf, and fringe fin
Lantern sharks, just to name a couple.
Now the Lynn Ninja Lantern shark was the one that was requested,
so I will try to tailor this more towards that one, but I'm
going to cover the species as a whole as there wasn't a whole
lot of information on every of the 50 species, so kind of
buckled it down a little. But the Lantern shark is a
species of dogfish and is also the smallest in the world.
Now the length depends on the species, but as a whole they're
usually found to be around 6 to 8 inches or 15.24 to 20.32cm.
Largest individual caught was 12.8 inches or 32.5 centimeters.
Now ninja Lantern sharks, similar to the other Lantern
sharks, prefer the deeper waters and will stay around 836 to 1143
meters deep, which could go to be about 2742 to about 3750
feet. The Ninja Lantern Shark is a
black color with white markings around their eyes and mouth.
They look similar to a cookie cutter shark, but they have a
very thin body after their anal fin and a tail that resembles a
nurse shark, so it's got a longer top than it does bottom.
These guys tend to have solitary lifestyles on the bottom of the
ocean off the coast of Colombia and Venezuela, although some
species can be found around the Caribbean waters as well as in
the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. And some species will be found
throughout the Atlantic as well. So they're kind of peppered in
pockets all throughout the ocean.
So it's it's neat you can find them almost anywhere but in
specific spots of anywhere. They were first discovered in
1974 by Perry W Gilbert, who was a great shark researcher and
focused his work mostly on spiny and smooth dogfish in the 1950s.
Eventually, he helped to create a shark anesthetic called Ms.
222 that can be sprayed into the gills during examination to help
sedate the shark while they are checking it out now.
The Lantern shark got its name because of its ability to
produce light that helps with camouflage when in shallower
waters, helping to mimic sunlight while using the
bioluminescence to attract prey in deeper water so to get them
to come closer so they can have a nice little snack.
Now, because of the scarcity of food in deeper waters, Lantern
sharks aren't very picky in their diet.
They eat pretty much anything that will fit in their mouth,
which includes shrimp, squid, cephalopods, crustaceans, and
worms. Sometimes they'll even get other
cartilaginous fish as part of their diet.
But being rather small, they're also prey for a variety of
organisms, including other sharks, dolphins, seals, and a
variety of other fish. But as with every shark species,
researchers are still learning a lot about the shark, and
different aspects will vary on different species of Lantern
sharks. Now, this is very true in the
case of reproduction, as believed that most species of
Lantern shark are ovoviviparous, meaning that they have eggs that
hatch internally and will be born into little baby sharks
after. Typically they're about two to
three pups or baby sharks at a time.
That can range from around 2.2 to 5.5 inches depending on the
species, which is about 5.5 to 13.97 centimeters.
Maturity will also depend on the size of the species as a dwarf
Lantern shark, which is the smallest of all the sharks,
becomes mature between 6.3 to 6.9 inches for males and 6.1 to
7.9 for females. Now the velvet belly Lantern
shark becomes mature at around 13 or 14 inches.
Now I forgot to do the centimeters for that one, but
imagine more centimeters. There we go.
Sorry about that. But each species will also have
different conservation levels as some are listed at least
concerned due to being at the bottom of the ocean and away
from many threats, while others are listed as near threatened as
the scarcity of food and lower reproductive numbers limit their
ability to repopulate. So they're not really 100% OK,
but others get a little bit closer due to their habitat and
the lack of food. But the Lantern shark possesses
a small threat to humans, as they have the ability to bite,
and can do so if they are at the surface, but they're not found
there very often, and also they're very small, so if they
do happen to bite somebody, they're really unlikely to do a
lot of damage. You know, smaller teeth tend to
lead to smaller bites. A very common question asked
about Lantern sharks, especially of the Dwarf Lantern shark,
which is the smallest of any shark species, would be if they
would make a great pet, and the answer is absolutely not.
Now the depth that they live at and the range of the habitat
cannot be replicated easily in captivity, which raises a larger
concern about sharks in captivity, especially migrating
sharks. But sharks tend to migrate for a
variety of reasons, one such reason being they want to find
food. Secondary reason typically tends
to be mating. So food or love one of the two,
sometimes both. But if the need for food is
eliminated by consistent and constant feeding schedules, then
the need to migrate will not be there.
Thus whale sharks in captivity are treated rather well and do
not have a need to migrate like their wild members would need to
do. Now other sharks, such as the
basking shark, they're not in captivity, they are rather
large, but it's hard to replicate their environment and
the patterns that they would need in order to be able to make
a habitat for them. Now I of course could go on a
whole rant and debate on whether or not any animal should be kept
in captivity. There's plenty of information
out there both for and against, and you are very much welcome to
have a different opinion than I do.
I of course can explain my side if you would like a little bit
more. I wasn't really planning on
doing that this episode, but if you guys do want more on my
opinion on that, I am more than happy to share it either in the
DMS or on Spotify or on an episode either way, Anything
like that. But that is what I have for the
Lantern shark. There wasn't a whole lot of
information on them as they they're not the newest shark
species discovered. But it's it's kind of hard to
know a lot about a shark that lives about 3000 meters down,
you know, but they're working on it.
As more comes out, maybe I'll revisit these guys in the future
to give you a bit more information there.
But of course, if you have any questions, comments, concerns,
you want further information, anything like that, feel free to
send it over to me on the social medias.
Or of course, you can always check back and send a question
on Spotify and I'll answer it in the correction corner portion.
But going on to Shark Safety this week, we are going to go
over how to respect sharks while diving or snorkeling.
This comes from live aboard or liveaboard.com.
I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but it's liveaboard.com so
if you want more information definitely check them out.
Now this topic was requested on Spotify by Izzy and I am more
than happy to cover more requests that you shark here.
As have so feel free to comment on Spotify or send them in Adm,
but there are a lot of do's and don'ts while snorkeling and
diving when it comes to sharks as they can be both predictable
and incredibly unpredictable pretty much at the same time.
Now First things first, you want to research the area, Want to
know what you could encounter which could be certain fish
including sharks. Now Barracuda for example.
They really scare me and that is because my Barracuda knowledge
is just that they ate Nemo's mom and siblings in Finding Nemo,
which six year old Alex really did not appreciate.
But there is so much more to those fish and I have not looked
into them. So hopefully I will not be
snorkeling and or diving with Barracuda anytime soon.
It's not in the plans, but past just knowing what's going to be
in the area. Look at the behavior that sharks
might exhibit, such as great, aggressive, or territorial
behavior compared to relaxed behaviors.
You also want to see the best way to interact with them so you
are less likely to get into a dangerous situation.
Great example would be that people frequently interact with
nurse sharks, and if they only observe them, there's very
little chance of a bite. When they are poked, pooled,
pet, or any other sort of physical interaction, they may
bite in defense. You'll want to remain calm as
well, which can be easier said than done.
I'll admit for the 8 millionth time that it was very much not a
calming experience snorkeling with whale sharks for me, but
thankfully they're whale sharks and they are rather chill so
they don't really care that I was losing my mind.
Now other sharks can pick up on sudden movements and noises, so
limiting them will be ideal. Now that does not mean you have
to be completely silent the entire time you dive.
Some sharks you might want to come a little bit closer by
making noise, and some will care about the noise you make and
others they won't give a flying hoot.
So what I'm saying is just don't be making random noises, random
splashes, anything like that. Try to limit that as much as
possible to keep the sharks a little bit away from you.
So you just want to really avoid mimicking an injured fish.
As I mentioned in previous safety segments, sharks like
injured fish because they're easy meals and anything you can
do to avoid looking like an easy meal is going to be very
beneficial to your safety. You'll want to keep a safe
distance from the shark as well. As mentioned a little bit ago,
sharks are wild animals that can be unpredictable and getting
right next to one is probably not the greatest idea.
Now this can also be seen as a threat 'cause they don't know
what you can do, so it can bring out the offensive behaviors from
the shark, which can also lead to a bite.
You want to stay about 6 feet away from any animal.
It's usually a good rule to follow, and if I remember
correctly, I believe it is a law in the Galapagos.
Not just a rule of thumb, but you don't want to disturb any
species and staying 6 feet away. It's going to be a great way to
allow animals behave in their natural manner.
Plus they'll probably be checking out a little bit and
they'll probably get a little closer to you.
But they usually, once they don't know what you are just
going to try to get away from you.
So try not to get too close to them.
You might spook them, might scare them and then sometimes
scared animals act very out of character.
Now a huge one ping piggybacking off the last one is to give them
their space. Not only does it protect you,
but it also allows them to be a shark.
You wouldn't be very happy if aliens came to visit and started
poking, riding, or chasing you. It's probably really weird to a
shark when a human just grabs on for a ride, so don't touch the
shark unless it's absolutely crucial to do so.
Now what do I mean by absolutely crucial?
If it's getting too close, push away from you.
Now, I'm not saying going with a full smack, but if it's getting
close enough that it's coming right up to you and you can put
your hand up and get it away from you, try doing that.
But, and this will limit the stress of the animal and the
shark as well, which will keep everyone very much safer.
Now on to some of the other don'ts that you want to do, so
you don't want to feed the sharks.
It's one thing when researchers chum the water to attract a
shark, It's another to go grab a burger and carry it in a wetsuit
to feed a shark. Not the greatest idea.
Sharks like easy food as mentioned earlier, and may
connect humans to food, which can put others in danger in the
future. Or even during your dive, the
shark could see, oh hey, this person gave me a burger that
came out their wet suit and I'm going to go over to Bro dude
over here because they probably have a cheeseburger in their wet
suit and I want it as well. They don't have a cheeseburger.
So all you've done is just get a shark to go bother someone else
and that's not really great. Now this goes for anything.
I did break this rule in the Caribbean.
Someone had some bread and we were trying to get fish to eat
it, which at the time was really, really cool.
But at the same time, looking back, that was really stupid.
I almost broke almost every rule I speak about in the Caribbean
because at one point there was a school of fish and I was like,
I'm gonna go stand in them. And then like, as I started
waddling over, I realized that is what I tell you all to not do
every every episode. So I was like, let me rethink
this. Thankfully my the other half of
my brain kicked in. But it's one of those things
that in the moment you'll might get caught up.
But hopefully you have that Eureka moment where you're like,
wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm not supposed to do this.
And then hopefully you'll you'll stop before it gets too late.
And thankfully, we ran out of bread before I realized this was
a bad idea and there wasn't a whole lot of bread.
So we were OK, but do not follow my footsteps.
Don't do that. But you also don't want to swim
quickly away from sharks. This can trigger their predatory
instincts and they might follow you.
What you should do is try to slowly back away while facing
the shark to keep a safe distance.
Now sharks don't know that they are much more powerful than us,
and I don't think I have any listeners that listen from the
ocean, so I could probably get away with leaking that info
without it getting back to the sharks, but y'all can start
telling them if you want. I don't know what will happen.
They don't know that we really can't mess them up without
tools, so they have to treat us with caution as well as keeping
an eye on them can help to keep them at a distance too.
They don't know what we can do, so they're going to keep us at
Bay. And lastly, you want to wear
anything. You don't want to wear anything
shiny or ignore signs while you are diving.
Now, shiny jewelry, as I mentioned in previous episodes,
can mimic fish scales which can draw sharks closer and can get
them to bite. Now if a fish is losing scales,
they could be injured. And more shiny means more
possible scales in the water, which means a higher chance for
a bite. We don't want to mimic too many
scales in the water. It's not usually the best idea,
but for signs, this can both be literal signs on the beach or
mentioned by the company you are diving with, as well as signs of
the sharks may be exhibiting if they're charging at you or
protecting an area you might want to back away from that.
Now sharks tend to be territorial over weird things,
so it's typically not like an alligator that is just trying to
protect its babies, cause sharks tend to not care about their
babies at all. They'll just kind of either plop
them out or plop an egg somewhere and then swim away and
be like, Yep, figure it out. Lemon sharks are one of the few
that actually try to protect their babies by putting them
into mangroves, and also lemon sharks sometimes protect divers.
So yeah, that's kind of fun too. Someone request a lemon shark,
please. Anyway, but another thing is to
look up the company that you are diving or snorkeling with to
make sure that it isn't sketchy. Now I just watched 47 Meters
Down since y'all voted on that and all I can say is good God
use a good diving company or book with a cruise and or your
resort or something like that because they will usually be
more reputable reputable there we go and just don't use sketchy
things. If you feel weird about it don't
go down in a cage or go or use their equipment.
Just just if if they're not going to give you a refund to
eat the money and just go with it, you know, don't risk your
own safety to have an amazing memory because chances are that
you could have an amazing memory or it could end absolutely
horrible and it'll be terrible for you.
So don't force anything that isn't there, you know?
But that's what I have for the safety portion of this episode
and we're going to go on to shark news Now.
This one to start it off is great White shark attack leaves
tourists screaming in terror as water turns blood red.
This is by the Mirror UK, which is not even really a newspaper.
It's kind of, I don't even know what The Mirror is.
I guess it is a newspaper out of the United Kingdom.
But anyway, there's a lot of weird things about this article
and starting off is that the attack which I put that in air
quotes, It took place in 2019 in New Brunswick, Canada on a seal.
So I guess technically it is an attack because the shark did
want to eat the seal. Also, why is something in the
United Kingdom reporting on a bite or I guess shark hunting
that occurred in Canada in 2019? It it's, it's weird.
I don't get it anyway, but it's a very click baity title, which
I don't like because it makes it sound like it's going to be on a
human. It makes it sound like there's
going to be horrible horrible like gore going on and it it the
shark at a seal that's that's what happened.
But this was all captured because people were whale
watching on a cruise, a little boat to go watch whales and they
were said to be screaming in the background, which it would be
surprising to see a shark eating a seal near your boat.
But usually the whale watching boats aren't like 3 feet long
and and the shark really can't mess up your whale watching
boat. And I don't know how I'd react
if I saw it. I mean, I can say that I I was
at the beach a couple weeks ago and I saw something rather large
and grey, kind of like dart by me, like a little bit away and
probably about 5:00-ish feet and surprisingly like my heart rate
did go up. But surprisingly I didn't panic
or anything like that. I just kind of turned around and
just started walking back. Sat down on the beach next to my
girlfriend and she asked how it was and I was like I saw
something big and grey go by. Could have been a shark.
So I'm going to sit here for a minute, see if anyone else gets
bit or freaks out anything like that and thankfully nothing
happened. Never saw it again, no one got
bit, no one screamed. So maybe he came in to come get
some fish and realize how close he was and didn't like it and
swim away. So that's what I assume
happened. But I I didn't scream.
So, I mean, sharks are scary for some people, but you don't got
to scream because it's eating anyway.
That's a whole anecdote, but the video pulled in about 180,000
views and people were absolutely amazed that sharks do shark
things sometimes, which I would also like to put into
perspective 180,000 views. It's it's nothing to sneeze at.
But the article made it sound like this was an incredible feat
to get that many views when usually if you're scrolling
through a video on YouTube and it has 180,000 views.
Like, no one's really impressed by that anymore.
And that is way more views than I have.
Listens on this podcast and I'm still very proud of this, But
I'm really wondering why they put like how many views it had
overall. As if that was an incredibly
unattainable number for for any video when there's videos with
millions of views. It confused me as well.
There's this article is just so confusing.
I did not get it. But the description of the video
states that the fin can be seen slicing through the water as the
shark attacks the seal. So pretty regular shark behavior
there. And then the sharks eat seals,
It's part of their diet, which is why you shouldn't go party in
the middle of a seal colony or try swimming with one.
It's it's not a great idea. It's why you also shouldn't hang
out in the middle of a school of fish, because sharks eat fish.
You know? It's another another thing
there, but that's that article and then opposite end of the
spectrum of the next article is called The Luckiest Guy in
Quotes. Shark bite victim recounts his
quote shredded End Quote arm stranger who saved him.
The Palm Beach Post is the one that did this.
So this one comes out of Florida of course.
But a Palm Beach man was having his morning swim that he took a
few times a week when a shark decided to bite his arm.
Now he was able to swim the 100 yards back to the shore where a
shell collector was able to tie a tourniquet around his arm and
control the bleed. Doctor said that the tourniquet
probably did save his life so off RIP.
I love that they called him a shark bite victim.
Rather than saying shark attack or anything like that or saying
that he's horrified, he's terrified.
They didn't say anything like that.
They're like, hey, we're going to focus on how a stranger saved
him, which is awesome. Now the swimmer said he had seen
sharks many times while on his swim, and he accidentally kicked
one in previous swims, but didn't have any bites on those
days. He also mentioned that the water
was rather murky and he couldn't see his hands in front of him,
which is most likely why the shark bit him now.
Limited visibility for us also means that they have limited
visibility as sharks. So most likely the shark saw
something moving while tracking some fish and he took a bite,
realized it wasn't a fish and he just had it off.
Now the doctor said that the swimmer should make a full
recovery. He only had soft tissue damage
and should be able to recover through physical therapy.
He also will be swimming again future for exercise but probably
not going to go out as far or the beach where he was bit.
Now, I do really like that mentality because he pretty much
was like, yeah, I've seen sharks plenty of times while swimming,
never got bit by one until now. Probably not going to go back
there, 'cause I got bit there, So that's not fun.
Also probably not going to go as far because sharks tend to be
further out. So he kind of realizes that he
went into a shark's natural place and he's not calling for
everyone to get out the water. He's not calling for sharks to
be haunted and killed and everything like that, which I
love. The report kind of just has it
as like, Oh yeah, I mean, this was an unfortunate event.
He's going to be fine though, which is great.
And thankfully he didn't like the the he didn't die because
the person collecting shells was able to come over and and tie a
tourniquet, which is really, I don't, I don't, I don't want to
say easy to do because I've never done it before.
But I'm I'm, it's easy information to find and I
definitely think that everyone should watch a video on it or
read about it. Something like that.
Anything just that way in case you find yourself in a situation
like this, you'll hopefully be better equipped to help someone
out. Of course if there's already
people there doing their thing, don't push them out the way and
be like we're going to try a tourniquet and it's like they
broke their arm. That doesn't help like so it's
one of those things that it's great to know it's easy to look
up. But of course if if it's
handled, don't start going in there and say, well Alex from
deep dives with sharks that I need to do this.
Nope, Just just help as he can. But that's what I have for this
episode. Thank you all once again for
listening, for being here, for voting, for sending me your
Spotify raps. You all are amazing.
I can't believe I'm here in this position.
It's so fantastic and you all are the best.
But follow along on the Instagram, at deep dives with
sharks for more updates or on Twitter Deep dive sharks.
I run polls throughout the week, everything like that.
You guys get to tell me what you'd like to hear next and also
send in any comments or questions, anything like that
and give us a rating on Apple or Spotify and share it with anyone
who will listen. Thank you all so much and I will
see you in the next one.