Sorry Everyone - No Shark Diver Sale

 

So now to addressing a "rumor" swirling around the Internet and the industry that Shark Diver has been sold. Rumors in the shark diving industry are as commonplace as those annoying little balls that get on cheap fleece sweaters.

To those in the industry who trade in rumors exclusively, we know this news might be of particular interest to you, and thanks for the the continued interest in our little company for the past 12 years.

Seriously guys don't you have better things to do but follow our lead?

In all seriousness the company has not sold. A cartel of high powered investors has not offered us $2 million, and no, we are not going away anytime soon. 

The reason? Probabaly because our divers love us:

 2012 Isla Guadalupe Trip Reports

We offer great shark tours with great staff and at the end of the day Shark Diver is a great brand. It was built on a strong foundation and made better year after year with the help of some seriously smart and talented people. When you work with the best the end product is pretty darn good.

That's tourism 101.

See you all for season 13 and another year of incredible shark encounters. 

Maybe we can come up with a better rumor next year?

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.

Sheep ships can have no influence whatever on the Great Whites

Drinkin' from the media fountain again?

"Shark expert Hugh Edwards and WA Agriculture Minister Terry Redman have backed the Australian Live Exporters Council in rejecting the Humane Society International’s (HSI) attempts to link recent tragic shark attacks off the WA coast to live sheep exports."

A fine howdy-do this morning as we awoke to this anti-shark/sheep media report out of Australia.

No doubt planted by our blogger nemesis in Fiji, one Da Shark, who never liked the idea of a causal link between hundreds of dead and floating "sheep pops" on the surface of the ocean to increased shark activity in a given region and unfortunate shark strikes on humans.

We cite two things wrong with this story.

1. The shark expert mentioned in this piece is a paid hack of the Australian Live Exporters Council.

2. La la la la la la la.

So there.

Meh.

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.

The Death of Intellectual Curiosity

Intellectual curiosity is a term used to describe one’s desire to invest time and energy into learning more about a person, place, thing or concept.

On this day, May 29th, 2012 we are hereby declaring Intellectual Curiosity - Dead.

And what, pray tell, caused this statement of fact to surface on our hallowed blog you may ask?

It is an email circulating about a recent story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. One that made outlandish and completely unsupported claims of a shark tag found on a recently caught white shark in the Sea of Cortez.

What's at stake is everything we know about white shark movements in the region and as the author of this email rightly points out, "falsified data may lead to the misinterpretations that could take a generation to correct."

Hello Oxygen Shark Myth.

The story about the tag caught our full attention many weeks ago when it first ran. Unlike far too many who accept as gospel fact the forthright media drivel being spoon fed to conservationists, a sorry state of affairs we call "The Sea Shepherdization" of conservation. We have always reserved the right to ask questions and drill down into the facts.

It's called intellectual curiosity. 

In the hands of those who propagate conservation nonsense it has been re-branded as, "meddling, jealousy, and hate."

The persons penning the email put forth a well known character in shark conservation and politics Dr.Michael Domeier. You may recall our blow out with him over the Junior Affair at the Farallones in California a few years ago.

Say what you want about that particular timeline our argument was with the animal and methods of tagging. What has recently transpired in the Sea of Cortez at a little place called El Choyudo will undoubtedly go down as the worst of shark conservation and science and a complete validation of how in today's media environment those who would invent utter conservation nonsense can in fact, be heard, be accepted, and be considered relevant.

Again, when Paul Watson can fake being assassinated to secure a second season of a reality tv show and NO ONE in the wider conservation sphere calls him or his organization on it, the world pays attention. 

And those who do - emulate.

Welcome to the death of intellectual curiosity. 

Fortunately Dr. Michael Domeier expresses a deep and abiding intellectual curiosity for sharks and was unwilling to accept a story that suggested that one of the largest recorded sharks in the Sea of Cortez history had a tag on it from California. 

We too were dubious, but our investigations only followed up to images of the tag.

What caught us were the nature of the images. In one, the alleged tag was in place with a small knife for perspective. Something only a researcher would do, certainly not a small village fisher-woman in Mexico.

Our inquiry ended with several conversations with the reporter at the Santa Cruz Sentinel and was left unfulfilled. Until the industry email we read today.

Kudos to Dr.Domeier for following up on this story, his efforts are to be lauded. He has exposed a lie pure and simple and one that causes the world as we know it to be diminished. Made smaller and cheaper by the fact that this animal was attributed to places and people it had never encountered.

We can all learn a lesson from this. This is the titular "Emperor with No Clothes" moment displaying to shark conservationists worldwide how the death of intellectual curiosity is hurting is all.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

Stand and be curious. 

More from Da Shark in Fiji NSFW.


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.

Star Wars Holiday Special - The 1978 Freakout

As Pete Thomas says, "it's a slow news week." So we dug up this video gem. The Star Wars Holiday Special, complete with the original commercials aired in 1978 (worth watching for those).

Warning: If you are a fanboy/girl of Star Wars this special will make you cringe. It's also got everything packed in it, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, the entire Wookie clan, Harvey Korman, R2D2 and Cirque du Soleil with Boba Fett.

Got a morning to waste? Sit back and enjoy:

Dead Tiger Pups from the Philippines for Sale?

Dead Tiger pup anyone?

Ya gotta love Florida. If you're looking for beach related items you'll find them for sale at almost every corner shop in the entire state.

Beach towels? Yup, they got that.

Sunglasses? Yup, they got that too.

Seashells? By the bucket load.

Dead Tiger shark pups? WTF?

Apparently there's a company called Atlantic Coral Enterprise that takes dead Tiger pups from the Philippines and mounts them. Complete with  a set of novelty googly eyes they sell these shark horrors for the princely sum of $49.99.

Of course we're not impressed at all.

In our world Tiger pups don't look like deflated tubes of dried leather. In our world Tiger pups look like this. Take your pick, which world do you want to live in?

Video by Fraizer Nivens, Tiger Beach, Bahamas 2011.





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.

Sea Shepherd - Whale Defense Meat Grinder?

We're not sure if anyone stopped for a minute during the "1 Million dollar big check moment" with Sea Shepherd last month to really think about the acquisition of their high speed Earthrace vessel.

Renamed the Ady Gil and painted a nice black, the self styled eco warriors from Sea Shepherd have been touting this ship as their new weapon against Japanese whaling.

All we noticed were the two giant propellers at the back of the vessel that to us looked like big trouble for whales.

With a top speed of 45 knots the renamed Ady Gil credits at least one very serious collision with "submerged debris" during her life at sea.

"Shortly after leaving Palau on day 34, Earthrace struck submerged debris which sheared two blades off the port propeller and bent the drive shaft. This necessitated a return to Palau in order to assess the damage and remove the prop."

The propellers are German-designed, carbon propellers that are 36 inches in diameter.

To date Sea Shepherd have not provided "propeller shrouding" for these whirling Ginsu Knives of the Antarctic and intend on putting this vessel in between Japans harpoon vessels and the whales. Propeller shrouding would protect whales from these extreme blades while still allowing this vessel to "close intercept" with the animals and Japanese whalers.

Did Sea Shepherd or anyone in the eco media stop to think about this?

Clearly, in the rush to congratulate yet another futile season of reality television, no one did.

North Carolina Has a "Big Problem"

File this latest video under sewer monsters, new science, or whatever. WE have been saying for a while now that the nexus of sewer lines, dumped American Pharmacopoeia and feces is a "recipe for disaster".

Now ladies and gentlemen, we have proof positive of things scary underground in North Carolina of all places:

Speaking of Media - "Gannet Man?"

Attention Discovery Networks:



Kudos to Blogfish for pointing this out.

Sharks-Working the "Zowie Kapowie"

If it's hip, cool, new the guys over at Super Fun Patrol got it covered. Seriously, they got it covered.

We recently found out we're their favorite Shark Blog...but lacking a little on the "Zowie Kapowie" factor we once had. Ouch!

Well, we read ya loud and clear Yoshi...let's light this firecracker!

Zowie Kapowie Factor 11-This is the only footage we know of this happening...ever. One of our crew members accidentally dropped a two lb can of Chock Full O' Nuts coffee over the side and a huge shark ate it. The dramatic results were filmed for posterity:

Oh Shark Week-What Happened to You?

Sigh. It's come down to this. We all knew it would eventually, and here we are. Last nights Shark Week show was...scratch that, could have been...scratch that.

We don't even know where to start with last nights show "How Not to Become Shark Bait". Overall some great images, but the clown suit, oh, the clown suit!

We'll let reporter and blogger Grant Butler review this show for you. He's got a better way with words and right now we're just all hung up on the damn clown suit and no use to anyone...like the damn clown suit this monkey is wearing right now-what the hell? WHAT THE HELL!?

Shark Tech-Really Bad Idea

In the world of undersea gizmo's that a diver can get a hold of-this one ranks as the worst idea we have seen in the last ten years since the "underwater soup straw".

Welcome to the "Wasp" a standard dive knife with a kick.

Pumping several thousand psi of compressed air into whatever you decide to stab that's swimming by, it's guaranteed to baloon-i-fy even the most curious, bass, seal, nurse shark, or Al Qaeda type you may encounter in today's vicious oceans.

WTF!?

Bad idea-interesting video. Frankly there's just not anything all that scary diving these days to warrant something this crazy in the hands of any diver at 60 feet.

Shark Tech-UW Text Messaging

Let's file this one under bad idea. The world of SCUBA has too many gadgets, gizmo's and well meaning bell-wiz-modo's for our tastes here at Underwater Thrills.

What ever happened to the old school days of a raggedy BCD, a good dive knife, and enough air to last maybe 30 minutes? THOSE were the days of diving my friend.

Now along comes this little number that will allow you to "text message" your dive buddy with the following message "there's a shark behind you!"

If the company that made this device has not realized it yet-text messaging is a pox on humanity. It eats up time, most text messages are pretty boring, and frankly if you're a diver we cannot see anyone spending the ten minutes to type out a message to a basic point underwater.

Anyway, here's the link to the blog Slash Gear in case you need another piece of plastic electric garbage attached to your gear this year.

Oh, and this WILL set you back $1300