If you head to the Bahamas this week and see the megayacht Penny Mae, cheer her on. Penny Mae is collecting shark data as part of the Discovery Yachts program of the International SeaKeepers Society.
The 138-foot (42-meter) Penny Mae is spending time in Tiger Beach through May 17. There, she’s housing researchers from the University of Miami. They’re tagging tiger sharks, even retrieving and replacing tags from October 2013. The older tags have been sending data via satellites. The new tags will do the same. The researchers are particularly interested in learning what impact increased tourism at Tiger Beach is having. Furthermore, the researchers are taking blood samples and ultrasounds of the sharks. The work is being done from a floating platform attached to the transom of Penny Mae. The photo at left shows the platform being loaded onto the megayacht prior to her departure. It was purposely designed for this trip by staff at the Florida Biodiversity Institute and Neil Hammerschlag, a University of Miami professor. Hammerschlag studies marine predators like sharks. Among his interests: how toxins biomagnify up the marine food chain.
Penny Mae is one of a few boats to join the SeaKeepers’ Discovery Yachts program. Through it, scientists are paired with yachts and megayachts belonging to SeaKeepers supporters. Each Discovery Yacht serves as the floating lab for the researchers. The yacht owners also get extraordinary access to some of the world’s top scientific minds. They can further be directly involved in the data collection—and ultimately ocean preservation. Previous Discovery Yacht participants include the 141-foot (38-meter) expedition yacht Copasetic. She assisted in genome-scale sequencing in Bimini in the Bahamas.
In related news, the International SeaKeepers Society will honor Wendy W. Benchley this fall for her ocean-conservation work. Benchley will receive the annual SeaKeeper Award in September during the Monaco Yacht Show. Benchley has worked for decades to shape government policies regarding marine life and the environment. She has been a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund for 28 years. She’s further board chair of Shark Savers and co-founder and trustee of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. She also co-founded the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, named for her late husband, to alert the public to conservation efforts of scientists, explorers, and policy makers.
MichaelMoore
A beautifully written article on the challenge of our time. Thanks Diane for capturing the activities of these wonderful yacht owners and ocean advocates as each contributes in their own way. The subject matter can be a little beyond the reach of many writers. You nailed it. Thank you.