This basking shark (not dangerous–they mainly eat plankton) washed ashore yesterday just a few miles east of Jones Beach in Long Island. The Washington Post estimates that the critter is 2,000 pounds and 20 feet long while CNN reports it may be 5,000 pounds and over 26 feet. Regardless, what an amazing creature!
It appears to have died from some kind of illness and researchers are examining the carcass before it’s buried in sand dunes nearby on the beach. Usually basking sharks die in the ocean.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Hopefully this illness (if that is the case) is not pandemic and is merely a one off sort of thing.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:41 am
H1N1
July 15th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Don’t most marine animals die in the ocean?
July 15th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Blooger @3: LOL. I read it to mean that typically basking sharks don’t beach themselves, or die so close to land as to be washed ashore.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
@TJ #1 – more and more, we’re finding marine animals bearing land-based illnesses, or very close analogues. It generally happens in marine mammals, not fish – but that doesn’t mean it can’t. I know a marine animal vet who is gravely concerned about avian flu (not H1N1) becoming extant in marin epopulations, an dthat being a vector for pandemic. Rest assured, however, that there are some very good vets and pathologists workin gthis one.
And yes, most marine animals do die in the ocean. So did said shark, because the ocean, by definition, extends to mean higher high tide, whichh the surf hadn’t yet reached.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for adding that Philip H., the transmission of viruses to marine animals is worth more discussion.
July 15th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Meyers and other “new atheists” are hindering rational dialog and, untintentionally, encouraging people of faith to remain steadfast in their religiosity and rejection of science. Free thinking atheist scientists need to show solidarity in our rejection of Meyers.
The commenters on his “science” blog are so inept and over-zealous that one can’t help but conclude that “new atheism” — if the activity on Meyers’s blog is any indication of its fruits — is close to earning full-fledged cult status.
Meyers’s main strategy is to encourage dozens of angry followers to shout down any dissenting view point, any idea that doesn’t conform to the narrow “new atheist” (=logically superficial) approach to criticizing religion. Just watch them all show up here soon to “pharyngulize” us. (Yes, the term ‘pharyngulize’ is actually part of their cult lingo.)
July 15th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Autonomy — leave that in the other thread.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Sorry to commit topic crime, but there’s a problem in the topic “How Scientific Illiteracy Cost Us 20 Years on Global Warming”. The most recent poster left an HTML tag dangling, and now everything after that tag is taken to be part of a link he posted. If you click in the “leave a reply” text box, you jump to his link. It’s impossible to reply. Could you folks fix that?
July 15th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Thanks Erasmussimo, it appears to be fixed.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Philip @5: more and more, we’re finding marine animals bearing land-based illnesses, or very close analogues. It generally happens in marine mammals, not fish – but that doesn’t mean it can’t.
I guess I’m not really that surprised. However while it is very interesting, it’s more than a bit disturbing. Are we talking more viruses, or are we talking bacteria? Also, just how much raw sewage is released into the ocean? Is that the most likely cause?
July 15th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
An illness? Or the plankton fighting back?
July 19th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Sad that this is occuring to our wildlife.