Trump visits bad for sharks
U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent trips during the winter to his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, sparked protests from nearby residents, ethics watchdogs and some elected officials. But there’s something that mostly escaped public attention: the trips are also bad for sharks.
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 off southeast Florida. Tracking these creatures from Miami north to the Jupiter Inlet requires flying in a small plane at a low altitude, with a video camera positioned outside the plane recording their movements. And the president’s sprawling Palm Beach estate is “right along the survey path,” Kajiura said.
Each time Trump visits what he’s dubbed the Winter White House, the Federal Aviation Administration issues a temporary flight restriction instituting a no-fly zone around Mar-a-Lago. Those restrictions grounded Kajiura’s flights, because his plane takes off from an airport within the no-fly zone, and he flies right over the resort.
Because the president travelled to the property seven times during his first 11 weeks in office, it reduced the number of surveys the marine biologist could take during that period by one-third.
“He has no idea that he’s doing it, but it does mean a significant 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.”
These surveys, which typically occur once a week between December and May, have already produced significant findings. Kajiura and his colleagues are the first to document the density of blacktip sharks in the region — popular among college students as well as the commander in chief — and found there are more than 1,000 sharks per square kilometre.