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.

Pro Shark Finning Talking Points - Got Counters?

Yeah but...

If there's one thing that a recent media bomb in Singapore exposed it was pro shark finning talking points. The ones being proposed last week were, by any standards, pretty good.

The person uttering them was Dr Choo-hoo Giam at a recent conservation round table that pitted Dr Giam against anti shark fin groups seeking shark fishing/finning bans in the region.

We're not going into the side show of last weeks misquotes, or media responsibility here, that's been covered by Da Shark and David quite aptly.

We want to talk about the fundamental currency of mainstream and social media - Talking Points.

TP's are the short media friendly quips that move media sources to write stories and create content. They also help on social media sites.

Talking points are the main arsenal for groups seeking to sway public opinion.

In this world, unfortunately, readers don't care for bulky PDF's filled with researched facts, they want a sound byte, they want instant raison d'etre.

It's a media currency traded by Sea Shepherd and PETA to great effect...in the short term. If talking points are currency then these two orgs represent the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac of the talking point world. Dispensing a treasure trove of toxic media to unsuspecting masses, bundled and sold without any thought to the future, just the media meme of "the now".

The problem with talking points is that they have to be factual. Your media opposition will take your talking points and, like a grenade thrown too soon on the field of battle, pick up and lob back into your position.

For the many grassroots shark conservation groups who have been growing, morphing, and relying on Facebook and other social media platforms to save sharks over the past two years the media staple of the talking point became horribly skewed along the way.

We have all seen talking points that have reverberated in social media eco chambers around the world to create free standing monsters made of whole cloth factoids that make no sense and provided the opposition like Dr Giam a treasure trove of his own talking points that actually resonate.

Does anyone remember the following media samples?

1. 100+ million sharks killed

2. Sharks = Oxygen

3. Asians are evil

4.90% of all shark species are now completely extinct

5. Japan kills all the worlds sharks

The list goes on and on with some unfortunate racist undertones to boot. Many in the shark conservation world disavow any responsibility for these talking points, "what happens in chat rooms or how people comment is up to them, we operate to a higher calling, just read our bulky PDF's on the issues and you'll know".

It's not good enough.

There are some seriously flawed media talking points out there and they are the current shark conservation meme. And yes, any group involved in shark conservation has the direct responsibility to disavow these gross misrepresentations and start, today, by doing the following:

1. Full review of the most egregious talking points out there.

2. Broad bi-partisan reworking of all media talking points. Let's all get on the same table.

3. A separate media educational track to the shark conservation base to redirect and refocus.

4. A disavowing of all racist talking points, "Hate the Policy - Not the People".

5. Create and promote talking points that are compelling and make sense.

You can still have talking points that have an impact. But we have to get savvy quickly on this issue.

Thankfully Dr Giam has educated all of us to our glaring media Achilles Heel.

It's not too late to clean house and reverse two years of fundamental media mismanagement. The fact is we got a lot of mileage out of , "100 Million Sharks Killed" but that sound byte has just landed back in our foxhole and we don't see anyone out there in a leadership position throwing themselves on that particular media grenade.

Which is too bad, because when it goes off, everyone will take a piece of it - like it or not.