Marine biologists in Malaysia are currently investigating a previously unknown skin disease in whitetip reef sharks. According to her, white spots and dark spots have been seen on the fish in the past few months. They consider that the water that has gotten warmer for years may have something to do with it. Marine biologist Davies Austin Spiji explains why: “For the cases around the island of Sipadan, we have good reasons for this assumption, because there are hardly any or no human influencing factors here. Sipadan, for example, is a marine reserve, all forms of fishing are prohibited here We can thus rule out the possibility that the injuries seen in the sharks were caused by fishing activities. And also the geographical location of the island, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with hardly – if at all – controlled human activities, tells us that the quality of the seawater has not been adversely affected by domestic sewage or other sources. ” The water temperature rose to 29.5 degrees Celsius in May. It is now one degree higher than in 1985. According to the Malaysian University in Putra, the data from the reports of the marine biologists would correspond to those recorded in the course of an investigation into coral bleaching. The professor Mohamed Shariff Mohamed says: “We can see that many people are still not convinced that climate change is a real problem. Many think that it is a made up thing by scientists. But if you look at the temperature changes that Coral bleaching and looking at it all, I mean, we can’t ignore things happening there. ” And those things would happen because of elevated temperatures, says Mohamed. In May, researchers tried to catch sharks to take samples for further research. But this attempt failed. They said they wanted to try again in July.
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