HOME |
RSS | 
It’s every pilot’s worst nightmare, yet most flight schools spend only two days on the topic: flying sharks. The pilot of a passenger jet flying into Christchurch, New Zealand spotted a flying shark Air Swimmer toy moving through the air. At least, we’re assuming — perhaps unreasonably — that it was just a toy. Anyway, the pilot radioed into local air traffic controllers to alert them:
The fish out of water was identified as a remote-controlled, helium-filled shark that has topped must-have present lists this Christmas.
The 1.44-metre-long Air Swimmer toy has a radio receiver attached to its underside and can be operated by remote control over a range of 15m.
Designer-developer William Mark Corporation warns that the shark is for “strictly indoor use only”.A spokeswoman for air traffic control company Airways, Monica Davis, said a pilot had reported the shark and its location about nine kilometres from the airport at 2pm on December 26.
Link -via Dave Barry
We don’t tend to think of Santa as being much of a risk taker, but really, it’s pretty brave to trust flying reindeer to tow you through the sky before you jump down a chimney. So really this Huffington Post slide show featuring Santa bungee jumping, swimming with sharks and doing other outrageous activities really shouldn’t be that shocking.
Hey caddy, my ball went into the water. Be a good sport and go in and get it, would you?
Well, maybe not at the Carbrook Golf Club in Brisbane, Australia, where half a dozen bullsharks live in the lake. They took up residence a few years ago when a nearby river flooded, and have been breeding since then. Some of the sharks are up to ten feet long. They’ve become quite an attraction, so groundskeepers feed them to encourage them to come near the shore. Watch a video of the sharks at the link.
Link -via Dave Barry
Most of the time, when you see the words surfer and great white in the headline, it’s bad news for the surfer. This time though, it was great news for the shark and good karma for the surfers involved. That’s because this time the story involves a few brave surfers helping a juvenile great white remove a large fish hook from its jaw.
While the audio on the video is pretty annoying, it’s still work watching (even on mute) to see someone brave enough to stick their hand in a shark’s mouth.
Yeah, I know, every time a movie set on (or in) the ocean comes along, you hope to see sharks. They add quite a bit of suspense to any situation! Next Movie has posters for five ocean films that would have been improved if there had been sharks lurking about. You’ve seen one; now go see the other four! Link
Comments Off
“Air Swimmers” is the collective name of these fun and cool flying, radio-controlled toys that comes in the shape of a shark and a clownfish.
Air Swimmers swim through the air with incredibly smooth and life-like motion. These amazing fish provide hours of remote control indoor fun in even the smallest of rooms (not for outdoor use). They require only four AAA batteries (one in the body, three in the controller) and have complete up, down and 360 degree turning control.
Update 8/12/11 by Alex – We actually carry this on the NeatoShop: Flying Shark – Air Swimmers
Sharks aren’t hostile to human divers. On the contrary, the understand that humans can’t breathe underwater and need to be rescued. Link -via Joe Carter | Image: Brain-Rain
The Jaws poster was so iconic that is has become ripe for parodies and being as how it’s Shark Week right now, there’s no time like the present to appreciate these great spoofs on the original movie artwork.
Don’t worry! It’s a whale shark. They’re filter feeders and are known for non-aggressive behavior toward human divers. Mauricio Handler captured this image off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where these sharks gather during the summer.
Link -via Super Punch | Photo: Mauricio Handler, National Geographic
In this anxiety-inducing video, you can see shark expert Valerie Taylor feeding a Great White Shark…by hand! And the end, she actually pets the shark on the head. As one YouTube commenter puts it “holy crap its the Shark Whisperer.”
via Doobybrain
Enal lives in a stilted house in Wangi, Indonesia. His friend lives in a penned off area of the sea. Although this is a remarkable scene for us, it might not be for Enal’s people, the Bajau Laut. These Malay marine nomads have a symbiotic relationship with the ocean which photographer James Morgan explored. He wrote:
Traditional Bajau cosmology – a syncretism of animism and Islam – reveals a complex relationship with the ocean, which for them is a multifarious and living entity. There are spirits in currents and tides, in coral reefs and mangroves.
Morgan snapped this amazing shot to become The Telegraph‘s 2010 Travel Photographer of the Year.
Link and Article via This Is Colossal | Photo: James Morgan
Lionfish are pretty, but they belong in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They lack natural predators in the Caribbean, so lionfish have become quite the invasive species since they escaped from aquariums ten years ago to breed in the waters off the US and Central America. In Honduras, divers are not only hunting them, they are also training sharks to eat the lionfish!
“At the beginning, the divers just killed lionfish and fed sharks with them to get the sharks to develop a taste,” said photographer Antonio Busiello, who observed the process in action.
“In the second step, to have the sharks develop an interest in hunting them, divers started to leave wounded lionfish so that the sharks could taste them. After a while, [the sharks] did start to hunt them and go after them.”
Living up to their voracious reputations, many sharks can eat venomous prey, such as lionfish, and suffer no apparent ill effects, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Humans are also encouraged to eat lionfish, which are tasty once the venomous spines are removed. Read all about it in this gallery from National Geographic. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: Antonio Busiello)
Vimeo user Mark Hannant shot this amazing scene in the Maldives. Five small sharks are chasing after their dinner inside an enormous school of fish. The fish school amorphously forms a hole around wherever the sharks move — all while a heron on the shore tries to take advantage of the opportunity.
via The Presurfer
Industrial designer Anthony Reale was inspired by the natural flow of water through a basking shark to design a water turbine that could be used to harness the energy of the Detroit River. The basking shark swims for eighteen hours a day with its five foot-wide mouth open to sift for food. Reale thinks that this model of water flow is more efficient than conventional turbines. He built a prototype and tested it successfully in an experimental water tank. The linked video tells Reale’s story of envisioning and creating this turbine.
Link and Video via OhGizmo! | Screenshot: OhGizmo!
In a story that may be too good to be true, an intoxicated Serbian tourist in Egypt killed a shark on a beach by jumping on its head:
“Dragan climbed on the jumping board, told me to hold his beer and simply ran to jump. There was no time for me to react or to try to stop him, he just went for it” says Milovan. “Dragan jumped high and plunged down to the sea, but didn’t make as much splash as we thought he would”, explained Milovan.
The reason could be because Dragan Stevic ended up jumping straight on the shark which was lurking near the beach, probably looking for its next victim. Dragan had nailed it right in the head, killing it instantly. The Egyptian police found the shark washed out on the beach that morning (pictured above).
Link via Geekologie | Photo: Macedonian International News Agency
To be more precise, it’s a flying, radio controlled scale model of shark. Sadly, it’s not actually a shark that flies that you can control at will.
The Flying Shark from Nitro Planes has as a 33 inch wingspan and can fly at full power for four minutes. You can watch a video at the link.
More than three years ago, we wrote about a boat that is shaped like a dolphin. The Seabreacher is now available in shark form, too. So you can roam around shores and terrify beachgoers:
It looks like a great white shark, complete with dorsal fin, gaping jaws and rows of dagger-sharp teeth. At 16.5ft in length, it is even the same size as one.
Unlike the real thing, it also has a 260hp engine, which powers it to 50mph above water, and 20mph below it.
The Seabreacher can also leap out of the water, partially submerge, and roll like a shark does.
Article and Gallery via DVICE | Photo: Toxel
Surfers in Australia found a 10-foot great white shark stranded on a beach. They carefully dragged it back into the ocean. Photographer Ruth Fahey reported:
“As it was threshing about, they tried first to dig the sand away beneath it to refloat it but ended up man-handling it back into the water. It was still very sluggish when they got to knee deep water so the surfer waded it out until he was waist deep.”
“The shark slowly swam away… much slower than the surfer exited the vicinity.”
Link via Super Punch | Photo: Ruth Fahey
Marine biologist and blogger "WhySharksMatter" has created a list of four things everyone needs to know about sharks. Full of thought-provoking facts and cool pictures of sharks, this post will be interesting to the ocean lover in all of us.
“Human beings are better off with sharks than we are without sharks, and we are in danger of losing them forever… but you can help!”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by whysharksmatter.
Comments Off 
Gimme A Hug is a documentary from the Protect the Sharks Foundation.
Sharks are one of the most important top-predators in our oceans and there is still a lot we don’t understand, or even know, about this fascinating animal.
This short documentary shows one of the most mysterious phenomena in the animal world; amazing animals, showing a totally different behaviour then most people would expect.
The DVD is available for purchase with subtitles available in several languages. See the trailer at the Protect the Sharks Foundation website. Link -via the Presurfer
Researchers using a criminology method made an interesting observation about great white sharks. It turns out the hunting habits of the great whites were similar to human serial killers.
The scientists adapted geographic profiling, a mathematical technique used to track down serial criminals, to investigate the hunting habits of great whites.
They observed the location of 340 shark attacks and used the data to locate the sharks’ “anchor points”.
In criminal investigations, a series of linked crimes – usually murder, rape or arson – is used to determine the rough location of the perpetrator’s “anchor point”. Most often this is a home or place of work.
Serial killers or rapists tend to operate within a confined area around the anchor point, so knowing its location allows police to avoid being swamped with suspects and prioritise those who live or work in certain areas.
The shark scientists linked the “crimes” of great whites off the South African coast – attacks on seals – and found that the sharks had a well defined search base.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
