Thursday morning someone among us posted this. I read it and cheered. Getting on a jet plane to escape to nature, which is problematic to begin with, is made ultra-problematic by landing in the vicinity of a biodiversity hotspot and swimming with trapped animals. We are opposed to it, putting it mildly. Get on a jet, immerse in nature, but let sharks be sharks.
Thursday evening Amie and I were dining with friends who we met in Costa Rica when they were on vacation. They have not been to Baja California Sur, and we were encouraging them to go to Villa del Faro with their kids, who love nature. The mom in the family said, half jokingly, that she had been thinking about going to get into one of those shark cages. We all said, polite-laughingly, that we would be there to support her from the shore. We did not feel the need to get serious and educate about why we would not really support her doing this. 12 hours later this video showed up in the Guardian, and I sent the clip to them, adding to the viral status it now has, to point out the coincidental extra humor. Two days later, not so funny:
Shark conservationists fear backlash after viral cage-smashing video
Experts emphasize that the incident, in which a great white broke through a cage holding a diver, was a ‘one in a million occurrence’
Amanda Holpuch in New York
Shark enthusiasts are concerned about the impact of a viral video that showed a great white shark breaking into a cage occupied by a diver in Mexico.
The diver survived, but the harrowing video shed light on a decades-old tourism industry that allows people to be within an arm’s length of great white sharks, separated only by the sea and some metal bars.
“The truth, of course, was that the tourist got more than he bargained for, but on balance the shark came out the worse for wear,” Samuel Gruber, a shark conservationist and founder of the Bimini SharkLab in the Bahamas, told the Guardian.
“Clearly it was bleeding from the gills and from an area near the dorsal fin,” Gruber said. “It is also clear to me that the shark was attracted to the cage for purposes of exciting footage.”
But Gruber said he did not oppose shark diving because he hoped it could “turn those who hate and revile these magnificent creatures into ambassadors”.
He also emphasized that this incident was unusual, just like shark attacks.
The diver, Chan Ming, was unharmed and said he was “reborn” after the incident in a Facebook post that followed his viral fame.
Chan had arrived home to Shanghai by the time footage of the incident was released on Thursday, racking up more than 9.5m views on YouTube.
Chan said on Facebook that he did not blame the accident on anybody and called the diving vessel’s team his “heroes”.
“No one need to take responsibility,” Chan said. “The boat teams are professional.”
Seconds after the shark entered the cage, the crew opened the cage’s top hatch, allowing the shark to push out of the water and dive back into the ocean.
Being trapped in a metal cage is a particularly difficult situation for sharks, since they cannot swim backwards. Also, when great white sharks attack prey, they briefly close their eyes, creating a moment of unpredictability – even for the animal…
Read the whole article here.
Organikos 