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about 8 years ago
Manta Ray hot lunch Marianas Variety (Press Release) — The Manta Ray Band will be having a hot lunch this Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, to raise funds for their trip to the Tumon Bay Music Festival on Guam next month. The lunches are $5 each and include fried chicken, lumpia (fried spring roll ...
about 8 years ago
gulfnews.com Whale shark sightings along UAE coast not alarming: experts gulfnews.com Dr. Elsayed Ahmad Mohammed, Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa, of International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told Gulf News that the recent appearances of the fish make sense given the whale shark feeds close to the surface and often ... and more »
about 8 years ago
KHON2 Whale shark surprises tour group off Haleiwa KHON2 A group led by North Shore Shark Adventures was visited by a whale shark Friday morning, the intimate experience captured on video. They were about three miles off Haleiwa when the shark slowly emerged. “It swam right up to the boat, really slow ... and more »
about 8 years ago
Thanh Nien Daily Carcass of beached whale shark to be preserved by Vietnamese scientists Thanh Nien Daily The Nha Trang Oceanography Institute in central Vietnam has decided to preserve the carcass of a whale shark that died after it got caught in a fishing net last week. Fishermen and local authorities on Thursday handed over the dead fish to the institute. Giant whale shark to be embalmed for scientific researchVietNamNet Bridge all 2 news articles ...
about 8 years ago
National Geographic Manta Rays Get Crittercams for First Time Ever National Geographic We didn't think suction cups would work because manta ray skin is really rough like sand paper. We knew suction cups worked well on the smooth skin of whales. The cups were originally designed to move pieces of glass. But we gave it a try, and with a ... Scripps Grad Student Receives Prestigious Environmental FellowshipScripps Oceanography News all 4 news articles » ...
about 8 years ago
Video From a Whale Shark's Point of View National Geographic Their goal was to deploy Crittercams on whale sharks to get a glimpse of the sharks' underwater world and to better understand their behavior along the reef. Like most people, Wilhelm had never seen a whale shark. He worked on the Crittercams for about ... and more »
about 8 years ago
Zap2It Dominic Monaghan on meeting the Whale Shark: 'I had this sort of out of body experience' Zap2It “Wild Things With Dominic Monaghan” returned to Travel Channel with its third season on Wednesday (Jan. 27). The premiere, aptly titled, “Majestic Mozambique,” finds our host on the hunt for the elusive — and quite massive — Whale Shark. Early on in ... Monaghan knows where the 'Wild Things' areVirgin Islands Daily News all 9 news articles ...
about 8 years ago
CBC.ca Brian Keating swims alongside La Paz's mysterious whale sharks CBC.ca They're such huge animals," said Keating, who saw his first whale shark less than 15 minutes out of the bay. By the day's end, Keating had met at least a dozen whale sharks. He even managed to snap a few underwater photos from their tail end as proof.
about 8 years ago
FIS Fishing ban for giant manta ray FIS The Ministry of Production (Produce) has banned the capture of the giant manta ray (Manta birostris) in the Peruvian marine waters, in order to preserve this species on the coast of the country. The measure, established by a ministerial decree, is in ... and more »
about 8 years ago
The National Whale shark seen swimming in Abu Dhabi marina The National ABU DHABI // A whale shark between three and four metres long has been seen swimming in the marina at the InterContinental Abu Dhabi. Employees at the hotel first noticed the fish at 1.45pm on Friday and quickly took a video and photos to capture the ...
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Entries in Maya (2)

Sunday
Aug082010

Hola de nuevo, México!

Headed back to Quintana Roo in light of a good weather forecast and a chance to finish some chemical ecology sampling we aimed to do last time but were denied due to weather and other concerns.  What’s chemical ecology?  Its the study of how animals interact with the chemicals in their environment and shape their behaviour accordingly.  In this case, we’re especially interested in what whale sharks can smell, what sort of “odor landscape” they live in, and how they exploit this to find food.

Unlike a lot of “big” marine scienctists that work off ships in the UNOLS fleet, we actually work from small boats close to the coast, so weather is a key factor.  Do me a favour and pray to whatever deity or natural force works for you, in order that we get some favourable conditions to finish this work so we can move on to other things, OK?  Me?  I’ll be praying to Chaac, the mayan rain god, not for rain, but for no rain.  More importantly, I’ll pray to the head honcho of all Mayan gods, who also happens to be the wind god - Kukulcan - for no wind.  I may as well pray to Joe Pesci, but it can’t hurt.

Monday
Jul122010

Whats in a name? Origins of the word "shark"

To a recent roundup of whale shark news, I appended a sort of human interest one-liner about how “shark” is the only word in the English language that derives from a Yucatec (Mayan) Indian word – “Xoc” (pronounced like “shock”). It was just one of those factoid tidbits picked up somewhere along the line of life, maybe while working in Mexico, I don’t remember. It tickled some interest from blogger @hectocotyli on Twitter, who posted a follow-up tweet questioning whether this was actually true, and citing a paper by Tom Jones, from the 5th Palenque Roundtable in 1983. That paper is entirely devoted to the question of the origins of the word shark. I read it and was transported, what a great story! So here it is then, a deeper look at the origins of this word "shark", with thanks to @hectocotlyi for having an inquiring mind and for finding the paper.

According to Jones, the very first mention of the word shark in association with the animal for which we use the name today was in a 1668 work by John Wilkes. One of the first mentions of the word in a diuctionary, however,  is in an anonymous work from 1689, which defines a shark as a “shifting knave”. In other words, a crook, dodgy sort or general baddie. That was surprising to me, because I had just assumed that the use of shark for a shifty character was a much more modern one derived from the noun referring to the animal wif de big nasty teef. Bailey’s Dictionary in 1724 used “scearan” as the likely origin for the word: a saxon term meaning “cut to pieces”. Webster took a different tack in his 1828 dictionary, accepting a theory that it comes from the greek word “carcharias” (sharp tooth), even though that word clearly has a typical Greek hard c sound, not the soft start of shark. These days, Oxford English Dictionary just says “of obscure origin” and to me that might be the best answer, if you insist on a European etymology.

The major alternative explanation is that the word comes from the Yucatec Indian word “xoc”. Now, explaining what the word xoc means in Mayan is not as simple as it would be for European languages; Mayan language groups are apparently among the most arcane and problematic for linguists to study, especially for the bizarre glyphic written forms. Jones goes into the issues in great detail, and its a fascinating read, but I could summarise by saying that at best the word refers specifically to sharks as we know them, and at worst to an ill-defined group of toothy aquatic animals that might also include large fish, crocodiles and toothed whales, in both fresh and salt water. There’s lots of usage examples to support the idea that it means sharks, though, including “xoc yee halal” which are arrows with sharks teeth for points, and “uayab xoc” which is a sort of demon or were-shark, part man and part shark. Its not that simple though, because xoc can also mean “to count to” or to refer to dates ahead or behind. In Mayan glyphic writing, glyphs are apparently freely substituted for other words or parts of words that are pronounced in similar fashion, even though the agreed meaning of the glyphs (or bits of ther glyph, sort of like syllables) may be radically different, which really confuses the issue and is a big part of the reason why written Mayan took so long to decode. In the glyphs from the Jones paper shown below, for example, the middle glyph is a counting glyph with the same meaning as the one on the right, but incorporates the glyph for xoc, of which the stand alone version is shown on the left. To me another obvious clue here is that the glyph for xoc is the head and mouth of a beast, even when used to mean "to count",  which seems to fit well the definition in the broad sense. The beast even has a rostrum of sorts, and triangular teeth.

If the usage roughly matches, then, how would a Mayan word make it to English?  Given that the Spanish and Portuguese were in closer contact with the New World earlier than the English, why would English not pick up the Spanish “tiburón”.  Put another way, why does the Iberian word not also resemble “xoc”? If it’s true that shark is of Mayan origin, then it must be a standalone jump – somehow going from Yucatec to English, skipping Spanish and Portuguese.  For the etymologists, it seems that this lack of intermediate steps or of words that share the same origin, which they call “cognates”, is a real problem for accepting the Yucatec origin of “xoc”.

Jones proposes a way that this could have happened, on the expeditions of John Hawkins from England to the Caribbean in the late 1560’s (incidentally, Hawkins was a pioneer of the English slave trade). Further, Jones proposes that the critical moment may have been an unanticipated battle between Hawkins and some Spanish ships forced to share moorings near Campeche in 1569.  The fight resulted in the destruction of several vessels from both sides and some pretty heavy losses, with over 200 of the English eventually consolidating onto a single ship called the Judith and heading for home.  Jones suggests that a shark frenzy feeding on the unfortunate victims of the battle – and on those who died of hunger and disease on the crowded Judith over subsequent days - might have created an indelible impression on the English (only 15 of whom made it back to Cornwall), enough to cement in their lexicon the local name for these demons of the sea.

As a complete linguistic noob, I find the proposed Mayan origins of shark to be more plausible than the Greek or Saxon suggestions. More importantly, though, it’s a way better story, and when there’s that much uncertainty, I’ll always choose the explanation that involves the greater ration of mysterious glyphic languages and dramatic ship battles on the high seas, wouldn’t you?