Flotsam & Jetsam

Arrest Warrant for Diving Instructor. A Ukrainian diving instructor has been issued an arrest warrant by the German Government for his part in blowing up the Nordstream Pipeline that supplied Russian gas to Germany, before September 2022. Volodymyr F, who they alleged was part of a group of six, including technical divers, was photographed by a German speed camera while driving the van used to transport them from Poland to Germany's Baltic port town of Rostock, where they rented a 50-foot yacht called Andromeda. The instructor is believed to have returned to Ukraine. (The Wall Street Journal)

How and Why Orcas Eat Shark's Livers. It's well documented that some orcas have learned to swiftly and brutally attack great white sharks and almost surgically remove their livers on which they feast. The attacks in South Africa are such that great white sharks quickly abandoned their former rich hunting grounds, devastating the shark/cage diving industry of False Bay. In the Northwest Pacific, orcas are similarly attacking sleeper sharks. To learn why and how they do this, watch this video presentation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRdHMG7mQ90

GoPro Captures Dive Instructor Masturbating. Seven years after it was recorded underwater by a female trainee's flight attendant friend, a diving instructor in Maragogi, Algoas, Brazil was arrested for pulling his shorts halfway down and practicing onanism. The woman, from Rio de Janeiro, only realized what had happened later when the images were transferred to a computer. One can only hope that the instructor, in his dolphin-like uncontrolled passion, breathed down his tank so quickly that he was forced to make an uncontrolled ascent and arrived at the surface balls up, a fitting penalty.

Doomsday Fish Encountered. A huge but rarely seen oarfish, also known as a "doomsday" fish, was found dead by paddle-boarders off La Jolla Cove, San Diego on August 10. A deep-sea fish that can grow to be 36 feet long, ten foot specimens are more commonly seen. It's the world's longest bony fish, with a thin, ribbon-like body The Doomsday name comes from the belief that the fish are harbingers of imminent natural disasters. The fish was found two days before a 4.4 earthquake struck Los Angeles. (BBC/LA Times)

Great White Sharks - More Sub-species. We've always thought of great whites as being a single distinct species, but an international team of researchers have discovered that groups in the north Pacific, southern Pacific, Indian Ocean, north Atlantic, and Mediterranean are genetically different from each other. This segregation of genes implies they may be in more trouble than we realized. The loss of any single population would severely reduce the species' overall diversity, removing potentially critical genes from the gene pool that are unlikely to have spread. The findings suggest each group relies on fewer sharks to breed with than thought. (Science Alert)

Fined for Use of a Drone. A British Columbia film company and its drone operator was fined $30,000 in August for unlawful use of a drone to film orcas. River Road Films Ltd was also prohibited from using or distributing the video it took at a well-known rubbing beach in Johnson Strait near the Robson Bight Michael Bigg Ecological Reserve on Vancouver Island. Ethical wildlife filming is an attitude not evident in the industry.