Smart Conservation-Minus the Viral Factor

The guys over at BAD posted an excellent shark conservation video teaser today. Had to say we liked it too...except the most important factor posting any video on You Tube-the viral factor.

Having a first rate conservation message that perhaps 30,000 people see is like pouring a "cup of salt" on an Antarctic Ice Shelf. We need more videos like these and we need to open them up to a wider audience. Kudo's to Leslie Rochat for this effort. Cannot wait to see the completed doco:

Maybe it's the legacy of decennia of successful terrestrial Conservation - but South Africa seems to be a fertile breeding ground for efficient and intelligent Shark Conservationists, which of course is great!

Case in point: Lesley Rochat who has posted this video on YouTube.
Shame that she has de-activated the embedding feature and thus limited its circulation.

I like it because despite being chillingly graphic, it nevertheless manages to remain pragmatic and doesn't gratuitously vilify and demonize the perpetrators and the Authorities.

That's smart Conservation.

Those are the very same people one will eventually have to meet in order to flesh out what cannot be but a compromise. Ultimately, it is them who will have to sign , and then do (or stop doing) something and that requires that one continues to talk. Yes, certainly assertively but never impolitely.

How not to do it is amply demonstrated by the recent Whale hunting fiasco - and I'll leave it at that.

Magnapinna Squid-Perhaps, Perhaps

We got the following email this morning about that face hugger critter found at 7800 feet back in November of 2007. We had an ident of Magnapinna perhaps the scariest looking critter you would ever not want to meet free diving at night. The email is from the ROV company who caught this on tape.

Now we're not so sure about the ident, here's the email, anyone out there know what this is?

Gentlemen,

I work as Senior Project Engineer for DOF Subsea Australia. I am on secondment to one of our companies in as you can see from my email signature below. We're an engineering and offshore services contractor to the oil and gas industry. We also perform all kinds of offshore work and recently you may have seen our team and one of our survey vessels was responsible for the locating of the HMAS Sydney. A long lost battleship of the Australian Navy that was sunk in battle in WW2.

We design and fabricate and install all manner of equipment and systems in all corners of the oceans. We have dedicated vessels from which we perform all our work and on these vessels we carry a full survey crew, an ROV crew for each onboard ROV, Saturation Diving crews, marine crew, deck crew and engineering staff. Within the travels we have collected large amounts of digital footage recorded from at least one of the 7 onboard cameras of the ROV(s) (some vessels have two) and share them amongst ourselves. I have attached the footage of the squid????? as described.

You can see from the title that the ROV boys have named it “Creature” you’ll see why. From the video overlay you can see the Eastings and Northings for the location in the Gulf from the onboard survey systems and the depth as recorded by the onboard ROV instruments.

Anyway if you can indent this let me know.

Company website