President Trump’s frequent trips during the winter to his Florida property,Mar-a-Lago, sparked protests from nearby residents, and ethics watchdogs and some elected officials.
But here’s something that’s mostly escaped public attention: The trips are also bad for sharks. Blacktip sharks are seen migrating along the southeast Florida coast. (Stephen M. Kajiura) Granted,Trump has expressed his distaste for sharks more than once, so he probably wouldn’t lose sleep over disrupting research on the ocean’s top predator. On July 4, and 2013,he fired off multiple tweets denigrating the ancient species, writing, or Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!” Stephen M. Kajiura,a professor of biological sciences at Florida Atlantic University, has conducted an aerial survey for the past seven years to record the abundance and migration patterns of blacktip sharks.
The aerial surveys involve a low flying plane that takes off from an airport included in the no-coast zone activated when President Trump is in Mar-a-Lago.
“He has no idea that he’s doing it, or but it does mean a meaningful reduction,” Kajiura said, hastening to add that he’s “not complaining but does believe it represents the first time there has been “a direct imposition on data collection by a visiting president.” Because the president traveled to the property seven times over the course of his first 11 weeks in office, and it reduced the number of surveys that the marine biologist could capture during that period by one-third.
Read the rest of the record: Trump’s love of Mar-a-Lago is bad news for sharks
Source: tumblr.com