Australia Acts Decisively Against Shark Tourism - Meh!

In a  stunning act of political theater taken from the recent pages of half assed tourism policies in Maui the minister of tourism for Western Australia has banned commercial shark diving.

“I have decided that Western Australia will not be the place for shark cage tourism, like those currently operating in South Australia and South Africa,” Mr Moore said. “There have been no formal applications for such ventures in WA as yet, but I have acted to let any potential operators know this State’s policy."

Yes folks, even though there are currently no operations seeking to dive with sharks on a commercial level in Western Australia, and even though commercial shark diving is a multi-million dollar conservation juggernaut across the globe one Mr Moore, Minister for the Inane in Western Australia, has banned this activity.

You have to admire the shortsighted politics of decision makers these days who in most cases can count the time they have spent on water with two or three fingers and actual shark interactions from what they see on You Tube or on Animal Planet. In this case Mr Moore banned future commercial shark diving after a series of shark attacks in the region.

Seems Mr Moore in his alter ego as Great Future Tourism Prognosticator has seen a world wherein shark attacks in the Western Australia region will increase ten fold because of the activity of a few  "yet to be conceived of" commercial shark operations far offshore. This will be the first time a politician of any stripe has pre-banned commercial shark diving based on existing shark attacks that have nothing to do with our industry.

As we said many months ago following the Maui shark ban:

The number one rule for regional tourism is "never take tourism options off the table." This rule looks into the future of tourism destinations and changing public demand. What is not popular today may well be tomorrows latest fashion.

Of course that does not stop those who play politics on a professional level from setting policies that  are ultimately short sighted.

Kudos Mr.Moore your decisive actions have saved perhaps...0 people from negative shark interactions in the region. We wish you luck with act two of your grand decision which sounds a lot like an expansion of shark nets to us:

“A Shark Response Unit has been set up by the Department of Fisheries to co-ordinate shark mitigation operations and research and a community engagement strategy is also being developed to increase general knowledge about shark safety and to work with public agencies and stakeholders to enhance preparedness and responses to shark hazards,” Mr Moore said.

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.

Dear Shark Conservationists, Lay Off Rosie O'Donnell

After 25 days being offline enjoying the joys of random travel from Panama to Cuba I finally powered up my iPhone at the San Francisco airport to get caught up on some shark news.

2012 will be a pivotal year for new initiatives and I was keen to see how many of the groundbreaking efforts of 2011 were shaping up for the new year.

What I soon discovered was a group of rabid and misguided shark conservation loons going after talk show host and comedian Rosie O'Donnell over pictures of her taken three years ago with a dead shark.

Three years ago, really? And you call this conservation? So much for 2012.

Rosie caught the sharks under the tutelage of Mark the Shark a well known Florida based shark fisherman who likes to goad the shark conservation world, and a few special individuals in particular, into foaming at the mouth indignation over dead sharks on docks.

The mainstream media is having a field day with this non story and Facebook, sadly, is in its usual righteous fury over images that have nothing to do with the Rosie O'Donnell of today, or even the news that as of 2012 Tiger sharks and Great Hammerheads are now protected in Florida waters.

Lead by You Tube video sensation, "Mr. How To Speak Australian" Erik Brush, an overly passionate under-informed shark gadfly who, when not on You Tube with his starkly creepy basement videos, can be found hawking his second rate book about the end of the planet. The rabid shark conservation community is joyously shooting themselves and the shark community at large in the foot.

It is time to stop.

Like a bad smell emanating from the sewers of a slow news cycle, shark conservationists are latching on to this ridiculous story with the ferocity of a ragged street dog in Latin America who has found something rancid in the gutter to eat.

Images from three years ago do not make for a news story and I am pretty sure that the serious shark conservation world could do without side shows like this one that make Sea Shepherd and Paul Watson's brand of "make it up as we go along" media output look like University of California - Berkeley's School of Journalism.

We can do a lot better in 2012. We have to, because this was a piss poor way to start the year.

Global shark conservation, and then there's Australia

The head of a gravid Tiger being dumped. Image Michael Ross

A 12 foot Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) was caught on drumlines off the Gold Coast of Australia this week with authorities "shooing away" photographers in an apparent attempt to conceal the size of the animal.

The female Tiger was found to have 30 pups inside her.

We have covered the ongoing devastating effects of drumlines on shark off the Gold Coast for several years, and it's not just an Australian problem with South Africa employing the same techniques to manage their regional "shark issues".

What makes today's story particularly frustrating from both a conservation and shark diving industry perspective is the apparent shark psychosis that Australian management officials suffer from. On one coast it is o.k to kill white sharks, tigers and just about any other shark species that is unfortunate enough to bite down on baited hooks, while on other coast where tourism with sharks generates million of dollars sustainably, authorities are attempting to shut some operations down and reduce the numbers of days they can operate - all in an effort to protect sharks.

White shark caught on Gold Coast drumline in 2009

Really?

While the rest of the planet marches headlong into new an uncharted territory for shark conservation with the addition of millions of square miles of shark sanctuaries, byzantine hold outs like Australia and South Africa are setting new lows for shark management policies.

Your either protecting sharks, or not.

In Australia it would seem that at least when sharks are commercialized sustainably with conservation minded shark diving operations, sharks need to be studied, protected, and managed. But in areas where humans demand high dollar value for beachfront housing and waters to wade in, shark conservation begins and ends with a baited hook.

Welcome to the world of Australian shark management, if you're a shark, take a left turn at Sydney, because that's the only way you'll survive Gold Coast shark management.

Patently Perfidious Panderings on Penny Palfrey

Like a pack of wild dogs slavering for a quick kill members of the shark conservation community descended on long distance swimmer Penny Palfrey last week over a report that members of her team had killed sharks during her latest record settings swim.

As it turned out this report was patently false.

The attacks were public, ruthless, and set at such a fever pitch that almost everyone in the long distance swimming community was left asking "who are these people?"

Who indeed.

Folks, these attacks were poorly organized, misinformed, and did a great disservice to the word "conservation." In fact what happened last week was not conservation at all but old fashioned group hysteria - circa 1848.

Frankly, the shark conservation world is peppered with a few very vocal, highly visible, hysterical doom screamers who litter the conservation mailbox on a daily basis with inane conservation clips from the shark world. All of which start with a breathless supposition "have you seen this!?"

A small dead shark washed up on a beach in Florida?

It is the end of the world and fishermen are to blame!

Dead sharks in bottles?

Let's hang the bastards!

Sustainable shark for sale in the local supermarket?

Burn-the-place-down!

Has anyone thought for a moment where all this nonsense is getting us as a community? After alienating the long distance swim community last week it is a question the hysterical "theater of the absurd/actors for shark conservation" should be asking themselves this week.

The Good News

Without a doubt the march for sharks has, over the past three years, made some great strides and there are some truly dedicated and smart folks working on long term solutions for sharks.

Kudos to them.

There are also some complete and utter conservation idiots who are raising revolutionary flags for sharks on issues that have little to no import on the long game for conservation such as Penny Palfrey when all the facts were not in.

Let's reign in the dog of war for sharks and start working on each and every project as a long term effort, not a quick and rusty knife to the back. It may look good on a Facebook page but at the end of the day it diminishes the entire effort in ways we have yet to understand.

Folks like Penny deserve much better and many apologies are in order.

You know who you are - so get busy. You can start with the same public zeal displayed in taking her down last week.