The 2nd only Sharks International was held in Durban from 2-6 June 2014 and was hosted by the Kwazulu-Natal Sharks board. Dr Aletta van der Merwe and four of her postgraduate students, Daphne Bitalo (PhDAgric), Simo Maduna, Charné Rossouw, Gibbs Kuguru (all MSc students) attended this surprisingly controversial conference. Nearly 300 delegates, representing 38 countries were in attendance, and although talks focused on amazing new discoveries in shark science, the conference received more than 7,000 tweets via the conference hashtag #Sharks14 regarding controversial topics such as the bather protection netting, shark cage diving and shark finning practices. Topics for conference sessions over the next four days included acoustic telemetry, physiology, genetics, fisheries and population ecology to name a few. The mid-conference tour with the biggest participation turned out to be the Aliwal Shoal Scuba Diving. On another diving excursion a diver even had a close encounter with a Blacktip shark and the scratch marks to proof it. The amount of networking and collaborations established during the conference was just incredible and taken that southern Africa is one of the shark biodiversity hotspots in the world, there is no doubt that this is one of the most fascinating and to a large extent unexplored faunas of our coast. Following the conference, two of the students Simo Maduna and Charné Rossouw also joined Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) on one of their offshore voyages to amongst other things physically tag sharks. The shark genetics group focus their research on assessing genetic connectivity and population structure of commercially important shark species such as common smoothhound (Mustelus mustelus), soupfin shark (Galeorhinus galeus), copper sharks (Carcharhinus brachyurus) and smooth hammerheads (Sphyrna zygaena).
