Tuesday 2 February 2016

Shark Research

I was lucky enough to gain access to some of the Leeds Uni lectures on Sharks, from their Zoology course.I illustrated some notes on them in my sketchbook:



The key points I took away are:
  • Main threats to sharks are - Shark Fisheries and sharks caught as by catch.
  • This is causing rapid decline of most populations world wide.
  • It is difficult to know about shark attack data, as many are unreported and often the shark species isn't identified.
  • The two most dangerous sharks are the Great White and the Tiger Shark. This has something to do with how common they are, their big size and that they are costal. (more likely to ross paths with humans innit)
  • There are over 400 species of sharks.
  • World wide distribution.
  • there are fresh and Salt water sharks.

My favourite kind of sharks are Orectolobiformes (Carpet sharks). This includes whale sharks (which is the ones I etched the other day.) These kinds of sharks generally have short mouths that connects by groves to their nostrils.

Here are my Whale Shark etching tests:




















"Established & incorporated in 1990 by Dr. Samuel Gruber, today the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation (BBFSF) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organisation located on the island of South Bimini, Bahamas. The mission of the BBFS Foundation is to advance our knowledge of the biology of marine animals especially the heavily impacted elasmobranch fish fauna (sharks and rays); to educate future scientists at undergraduate and graduate levelsand to disseminate our research results to advance the field of marine science and conservation biology, as well as raise public perception and awareness of sharks and other marine species.
BBFSF has three main objectives:
  1. Understanding the biology of sharks and rays and the role that they play in the marine ecosystem through cutting edge field and laboratory research spanning multiple disciplines such as molecular and behavioral ecology, physiology, conservation and sensory biology.
  2. Educating future scientists through providing opportunities for students, to design and conduct research projects at the undergraduate and graduate level, to complete advanced university degrees in the marine sciences; and through voluntary training as interns, thus advancing their field experience and skills.
  3. Enhancing conservation and awareness through disseminating our results to both the public (tours of our facility, talks, TV documentaries, social media, posters and blogs) and scientists (peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and posters, fishery reports and books).

I looked on this website, and asides from making me wonder if volunteering with some sharks is a tempting thing, I found this link to this charity that supports them. I did also notice in the enhance section that they use posters etc to communicate and raise awareness about their sharks and what should be done for the conservation of them.

"For the last few years we are also grateful to have been supported by the Save our Seas Foundation, and now form a partnership with the Foundation, collaborating and working together where possible."
On this site I came across things called project blogs, which is something that I have thought about before and think could be a really interesting and ideal opportunity to illustrate. The use of illustrations could then be used on supporting campaign ephemera such as posters. This could help to spark external interest and, be a little bit different to just the use of photography. 


There is certainly scope for illustrations to be able to sit in around these images. 

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