NOAA Killing 18 galapagos sharks near the remote French Frigate Shoals in seven weeks isn’t the easiest of tasks, especially when you're casting a fishing line from shore that’s baited with a large tuna head. You never know what you might get. And it wasn't galapagos sharks. Eleven researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spent part of their summer in the nature preserve trying to kill the species they say is the main culprit in the demise of baby monk seals. They did catch some tiger and white tip sharks, which they threw back. NOAA's shark eradication program, with this year's 18-shark target, was approved in March by state officials. “You can look at it two ways,” said Sam Gon, a senior scientist and cultural advisor at Hawaii’s Nature Conservancy. “Either they aren’t very good at getting sharks or they are being very careful about which sharks they…

A great white shark off the Neptune Islands, Australia. Photograph: Mike Parry/Minden Pictures/Corbis The deaths of five swimmers killed by sharks in the waters off Western Australia[1] in the past 12 months have led local officials to consider ending the ban on the killing of great whites."There's no documented account of fatal attacks attributed to white sharks in such a short time and geographic location, anywhere in the world, than what we have experienced in Western Australia and action is necessary to deal with it," said the state minister of fisheries, Norman Moore, in the wake of the latest fatal attack in July. "I think we need to have another look to see whether there's been a significant increase in great white numbers since they became protected. And if that's the case, should they still be on a protected list?"Moore asked for urgent clarification from Canberra on the shark's status…

More than 160 years ago, Sir John Franklin sailed into his Arctic prison, with the comforting conceit that technology would ensure his escape. Franklin’s vessels, the Erebus and the Terror, were outfitted with steam engines, desalinators, iron plates over their wooden hulls, and propellers and rudders that could be retracted to prevent ice damage. Something about that tragic hubris and my own sense of what those punishing years must have been like drew me to the story decades ago. I lived in the Arctic in the 1980s and ’90s and experienced first hand how capricious and callous the environment can be. Among my books is a fragile first edition of Francis Leopold McClintock’s account of his search for Franklin, which includes a faithful reproduction of the only written message left by the crew before they perished. On a pilgrimage to desolate Beechey Island, I stood over the graves of the…