Controlled experiment finds no detectable citation bump from Twitter promotion.

Multiple studies across a variety of scientific disciplines have shown that the number of times that a paper is shared on Twitter (now called X) is correlated with the number of citations that paper receives. However, these studies were not designed to answer whether tweeting about scientific papers causes an increase in citations, or whether they were simply highlighting that some papers have higher relevance, importance or quality and are therefore both tweeted about more and cited more. The authors of this study are leading science communicators on Twitter from several life science disciplines, with substantially higher follower counts than the average scientist, making us uniquely placed to address this question. We conducted a three-year-long controlled experiment, randomly selecting five articles published in the same month and journal, and randomly tweeting one while retaining the others as controls. This process was repeated for 10 articles from each of 11 journals, recording Altmetric scores, number of tweets, and citation counts before and after tweeting. Randomization tests revealed that tweeted articles were downloaded 2.6-3.9 times more often than controls immediately after tweeting, and retained significantly higher Altmetric scores (+81%) and number of tweets (+105%) three years after tweeting. However, while some tweeted papers were cited more than their respective control papers published in the same journal and month, the overall increase in citation counts after three years (+7% for Web of Science and +12% for Google Scholar) was not statistically significant (p > 0.15). Therefore while discussing science on social media has many professional and societal benefits (and has been a lot of fun), increasing the citation rate of a scientist's papers is likely not among them.

Potential for recovery of declining reef sharks.

Data on shark populations in coral reefs raise concern and hope for recovery.

"A prized Pacific shark": the rise and fall (and rise again ?) of the world's first ecolabel certified sustainable shark fishery.

There is intense public interest surrounding the conservation and management of sharks, including a debate over whether sustainable shark fisheries are possible or fishing bans on sharks are needed to conserve these animals. An important but rarely discussed data point in discussions of global shark fisheries is the case of British Columbia's fishery for Pacific spiny dogfish, Squalus suckleyi, which in 2011 became the first Marine Stewardship Council-certified shark fishery anywhere in the world. A few years later, despite reportedly healthy local stocks and thriving global markets for this shark, the fishery voluntarily withdrew its MSC certification, and in recent years more than 95% of the quota for Pacific spiny dogfish has been left in the water. This study provides insight into what happened to this fishery through a review of grey literature and a series of stakeholder interviews with British Columbian fishermen, fish processors, managers and environmentalists. It is a rare case study of a fishery that largely ceased operations without a clear mechanistic explanation like a stock collapse, a government mandate to limit fishing or a clear shift in market demand. This fishery appears to have been affected by the combination of several factors, including a temporary reduction in biomass due to oceanographic effects, potential blowback from overly broad environmental messaging that did not distinguish between sustainable and unsustainable shark fisheries, management changes resulting in altered fishing incentives and changes to processing capacity associated with consolidating the fishing industry into ownership by relatively few large companies.

A content analysis of 32 years of Shark Week documentaries.

Despite evidence of their importance to marine ecosystems, at least 32% of all chondrichthyan species are estimated or assessed as threatened with extinction. In addition to the logistical difficulties of effectively conserving wide-ranging marine species, shark conservation is believed to have been hindered in the past by public perceptions of sharks as dangerous to humans. Shark Week is a high-profile, international programming event that has potentially enormous influence on public perceptions of sharks, shark research, shark researchers, and shark conservation. However, Shark Week has received regular criticism for poor factual accuracy, fearmongering, bias, and inaccurate representations of science and scientists. This research analyzes the content and titles of Shark Week episodes across its entire 32 years of programming to determine if there are trends in species covered, research techniques featured, expert identity, conservation messaging, type of programming, and portrayal of sharks. We analyzed titles from 272 episodes (100%) of Shark Week programming and the content of all available (201; 73.9%) episodes. Our data demonstrate that the majority of episodes are not focused on shark bites, although such shows are common and many Shark Week programs frame sharks around fear, risk, and adrenaline. While criticisms of disproportionate attention to particular charismatic species (e.g. great whites, bull sharks, and tiger sharks) are accurate and supported by data, 79 shark species have been featured briefly at least once. Shark Week's depictions of research and of experts are biased towards a small set of (typically visual and expensive) research methodologies and (mostly white, mostly male) experts, including presentation of many white male non-scientists as scientific experts. While sharks are more often portrayed negatively than positively, limited conservation messaging does appear in 53% of episodes analyzed. Results suggest that as a whole, while Shark Week is likely contributing to the collective public perception of sharks as bad, even relatively small alterations to programming decisions could substantially improve the presentation of sharks and shark science and conservation issues.

The role and value of science in shark conservation advocacy.

Many species of sharks are threatened with extinction, and there has been a longstanding debate in scientific and environmental circles over the most effective and appropriate strategy to conserve and protect them. Should we allow for sustainable fisheries exploitation of species which can withstand fishing pressure, or ban all fisheries for sharks and trade in shark products? In the developing world, exploitation of fisheries resources can be essential to food security and poverty alleviation, and global management efforts are typically focused on sustainably maximizing economic benefits. This approach aligns with traditional fisheries management and the perspectives of most surveyed scientific researchers who study sharks. However, in Europe and North America, sharks are increasingly venerated as wildlife to be preserved irrespective of conservation status, resulting in growing pressure to prohibit exploitation of sharks and trade in shark products. To understand the causes and significance of this divergence in goals, we surveyed 155 shark conservation focused environmental advocates from 78 environmental non-profits, and asked three key questions: (1) where do advocates get scientific information? (2) Does all policy-relevant scientific information reach advocates? and (3) Do advocates work towards the same policy goals identified by scientific researchers? Findings suggest many environmental advocates are aware of key scientific results and use science-based arguments in their advocacy, but a small but vocal subset of advocates report that they never read the scientific literature or speak to scientists. Engagement with science appears to be a key predictor of whether advocates support sustainable management of shark fisheries or bans on shark fishing and trade in shark products. Conservation is a normative discipline, and this analysis more clearly articulates two distinct perspectives in shark conservation. Most advocates support the same evidence-based policies as academic and government scientists, while a smaller percentage are driven more by moral and ethical beliefs and may not find scientific research relevant or persuasive. We also find possible evidence that a small group of non-profits may be misrepresenting the state of the science while claiming to use science-based arguments, a concern that has been raised by surveyed scientists about the environmental community. This analysis suggests possible alternative avenues for engaging diverse stakeholders in productive discussions about shark conservation.

Inaccurate and Biased Global Media Coverage Underlies Public Misunderstanding of Shark Conservation Threats and Solutions.

Sharks are a taxon of significant conservation concern and associated public interest. The scientific community largely supports management policies focusing on sustainable fisheries exploitation of sharks, but many concerned members of the public and some environmental advocates believe that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist and therefore support total bans on all shark fisheries and/or trade in shark products. The belief that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist persists despite scientific evidence showing that they can and do, and are important to livelihoods. Additionally, many concerned members of the public are only aware of one threat to sharks and are unaware of other threats-or of most available policy solutions. Here we assess whether the popular press plays a role in spreading misinformation and misunderstanding about these issues via the agenda-setting, priming, and cultivation roles of the media, with the goal of better understanding the causes and consequences of public confusion.

Marine Conservation: Reef Sharks Need Bigger Protected Areas.

A new study finds that most marine protected areas around coral reefs are too small to protect reef-associated sharks.

Increased Abundance and Nursery Habitat Use of the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) in Response to a Changing Environment in a Warm-Temperate Estuary.

A general northward shift in marine species distributions has been observed in the western North Atlantic Ocean, which may have significant ecological consequences. Large coastal sharks can have wide migratory distributions but show fidelity to specific nursery habitats. Here we show evidence for nursery range expansion into Pamlico Sound, North Carolina by a marine apex predator, the Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas). Previous assessments have shown little to no use of estuarine North Carolina waters as nursery habitat by Bull Sharks from 1965-2011. Juvenile sharks were rarely captured in a fishery-independent gillnet survey conducted by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (NCDMF) from 2003-2011, but were present every year from 2011-2016. Juvenile Bull Shark presence in the Sound was strongly related to early summer temperatures and late summer salinities, which have increased in the estuary over the 13 survey years, and further evidence for increasing water temperatures in Pamlico Sound was found in a 45-year data set for the NCDMF estuarine trawl survey. These results suggest that increasing water temperature and salinity have allowed Bull Sharks to expand their nursery habitat. This shift will have unknown, but potentially strong, impacts on both the local ecosystem and interactions with humans.

How Are Scientists Using Social Media in the Workplace?

Social media has created networked communication channels that facilitate interactions and allow information to proliferate within professional academic communities as well as in informal social circumstances. A significant contemporary discussion in the field of science communication is how scientists are using (or might use) social media to communicate their research. This includes the role of social media in facilitating the exchange of knowledge internally within and among scientific communities, as well as externally for outreach to engage the public. This study investigates how a surveyed sample of 587 scientists from a variety of academic disciplines, but predominantly the academic life sciences, use social media to communicate internally and externally. Our results demonstrate that while social media usage has yet to be widely adopted, scientists in a variety of disciplines use these platforms to exchange scientific knowledge, generally via either Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or blogs. Despite the low frequency of use, our work evidences that scientists perceive numerous potential advantages to using social media in the workplace. Our data provides a baseline from which to assess future trends in social media use within the science academy.

Preferred conservation policies of shark researchers.

There is increasing concern about the conservation status of sharks. However, the presence of numerous different (and potentially mutually exclusive) policies complicates management implementation and public understanding of the process. We distributed an online survey to members of the largest professional shark and ray research societies to assess member knowledge of and attitudes toward different conservation policies. Questions covered society member opinions on conservation and management policies, personal histories of involvement in advocacy and management, and perceptions of the approach of conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to shark conservation. One hundred and two surveys were completed (overall response rate 21%). Respondents considered themselves knowledgeable about and actively involved in conservation and management policy; a majority believed scientists have a responsibility to advocate for conservation (75%), and majorities have sent formal public comments to policymakers (54%) and included policy suggestions in their papers (53%). They believe sustainable shark fisheries are possible, are currently happening today (in a few places), and should be the goal instead of banning fisheries. Respondents were generally less supportive of newer limit-based (i.e., policies that ban exploitation entirely without a species-specific focus) conservation policy tools, such as shark sanctuaries and bans on the sale of shark fins, than of target-based fisheries management tools (i.e., policies that allow for sustainable harvest of species whose populations can withstand it), such as fishing quotas. Respondents were generally supportive of environmental NGO efforts to conserve sharks but raised concerns about some NGOs that they perceived as using incorrect information and focusing on the wrong problems. Our results show there is an ongoing debate in shark conservation and management circles relative to environmental policy on target-based natural resources management tools versus limit-based conservation tools. They also suggest that closer communication between the scientific and environmental NGO communities may be needed to recognize and reconcile differing values and objectives between these groups.