Andrew Darby, Shark Pundit, Village Idiot, or Both?

Darby unfrozen or frozen?

"Some say it's time we started hunting great white sharks. There already is a form of hunting sharks, actually – it's called cage diving."

So quoteth the Great Darby this week in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald so fought with 1970's shark hysteria that one has to wonder if this reporter was not frozen in time at the exact second he sashayed out of the movie Jaws in 1976, wearing his oh-so-hip bell-bottom jeans. Only to unfrozen and put in front of a computer to pen this utter load of shark drivel.

This is what it has come to in the shark world. Reporters who have no clue attempting to grab at the media spotlight when sharks strike, people question, and answers are hard to come by.


Instead of seeing the global shark diving industry as a force for education, awareness, and conservation, Andrew Darby has instead chosen to spend his valuable research time watching a few You Tube shark videos and perhaps asking random homeless people on the streets of Sydney what they think of white sharks.


"The question is: what do the sharks think of this? How much do they learn to associate food with those strange-smelling creatures trailing four appendages – in other words, us?"

Andrew Darby is a media bottom feeder of the lowest order. A shark attack fear monger who uses cracked innuendo and half witted causal conclusions to sell papers and stay relevant. To ask what an animal with the brain the size of a walnut thinks of,  "strange-smelling creatures trailing four appendages" is to understand everything you want to know about Darby's writing style, his interest in the commercial shark diving world, and his capacity for any sort of investigative journalism.

Sorry, our bad, this was an Op-Ed piece. So Andrew does, in fact, get to spew forth babbling shark nonsense to waiting audiences like he's an expert, a waterman, and knowledgeable in any way shape or form about sharks and shark behaviour.

A lot has been written by smart people about recent shark strikes in Western Australia which have been surprising, devastating for families, and a source of questioning by those who work with sharks on a daily basis.

It right to question and propose solutions when these unfortunate events happen.

It's wrong to shovel piles of steaming words together into a wheelbarrow and parade through the media streets shouting, "bring out yer dead!," as Andrew has done this week.

Shame on Andrew Darby and for the record there is no causal relationship between recent Western Australia shark strikes and any part of the commercial shark diving industry anywhere. To suggest so, is to also suggest that white sharks will repeatedly attack big ocean going vessels captained by a lunatic shark hunter, an over the top marine biologist, and a small town sheriff.


The movie Jaws was fiction Andrew, fiction, look it up because ironically much of your recent Op-Ed was also fiction and we're here to put you on notice.

You want to write about the commercial shark diving world?

Get out from behind your desk, go live a life, and go discover an industry that has matured light years past your primitive descriptions of it. It's been a quiet 20 year revolution, but like all revolutions when folks from the past come and try and change hard won paradigms, heads roll.

We refuse to put up with idiot mainstream shark journalism anymore.

Sorry about your head Andrew, perhaps they can refreeze it?

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.