The shark diving industry blog covering sharks, shark cage diving, shark conservation and things we find "amusing" since 2008 www.sharkdiver.com, www.sharkdivers.com, www.divingwithsharks.com
Showing posts with label great white shark cage breach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great white shark cage breach. Show all posts
With just a few weeks until our 2011 white shark season at Isla Guadalupe celebrating a decade of successful operations on site we're pulling some old and not so old trip reports written by our divers so you can start getting excited.
T-minus 15 days and counting:
For our divers 2010 has been the Trip of a Lifetime so far. Celebrated with email blasts to friends and Facebook posts to the world.
These lucky divers have met the most charismatic, studied, and filmed white sharks on the planet.
For newly minted Shark Diver Craig Reynolds, nothing but his own Great White Blog to recount his adventures this year would do:
Day 4 – TWO BLACK EYES- Knowing that sharks are active feeders at dawn – due to the favourable light conditions it provides for hunting – my cage team volunteers for early morning “shark lookout.” Really, it just sounds like an extra hour for keeners so we’ll take it, thanks. And one hour quickly turns into two.
The sharks are slow to venture up from the bottom for the first while. Their grey topside blends in almost perfectly with the abyss below our feet. The white tips of their flanks appear to be nothing more than small fish from far away. And as your mind starts to play tricks on you, the small fish start to look like White Sharks.
But by the second day, we’ve grown more accustomed to our steel confines.
Gradually, you start to find ways of hooking your feet around the ladder and pivoting your body like a climber, hanging on to a bar with a couple of fingers while the others hold the camera, and leaning with the current instead of against it. Your movements become more efficient as does your breathing that bordered on hyperventilation the previous day. I can only imagine how fast your heart would race if you were outside of the cage...
Apparently he's an ex special forces shark diver with the St Petersburg Oceanarium, touted to be the largest in Russia and Eastern Europe.
What caught our eye today was Russian Televisions intro to the topic of sharks and shark diving - and the video clip they used to make a point.
In fact we're not so sure about the Jaws era spin on the entire article and video. They even managed to squeeze in a classic Erich Ritter style misquote from the Sergey:
The hardest thing when working with sharks is to never show that you are scared. You can't even have increased blood pressure because they can feel it. No emotions – even if they try to bite you,” Sergey says.
If there's anyone who reads this blog locally perhaps a word with the editor?
From Luke Tipple's Blog this week. A look into the firestorm of media surrounding IslaGuadalupes best documented and unnecessary cage breach. We happen to agree with Luke's position and while unpopular to some of the smaller minded in our community "who just see personal gain" what was needed to be said about this sad event, was said, and that takes leadership.
What neither the shooter of this video, who last week could be seen tastelessly trotting around signed pieces of shattered cage on national television, nor the operator seem to comprehend is the blow back from this event in Mexico.
This cage breach video and subsequent posting on You Tube directly resulted in a ban on all chumming at the island in 2008.
Unfortunately it does not end here as the national media in Mexico now has this story and you can rest assured there will be much more in terms of anti-shark diving sentiment from Mexico in the coming weeks and months:
Recently I was asked to give my comments on the “Great White Shark Accident”, a viral video that gained worldwide attention after heavy YouTube exposure. The video depicts a large (around 14-15 feet) White Shark ‘breaching’ a the cage of a well known and respected cage diving operator at Isla Guadalupe. My comments were picked up by ABC news as you can see in the following video:
The response was overwhelming and rather interesting. It is the opinion of some people in the shark diving industry that nothing should have been said about ‘operator error’, effectively the strategy was to simply hope that the issue would go away. I find that a rather difficult plan to follow when the divers in question have since appeared on the nationally aired ‘Today Show’ and their video has hit ever major news desk in the world. That includes the front page of Australian and British newspapers not to mention many morning and evening talk/news shows.
It is my opinion that a video such as this, released without due care to follow up PR, can only be detrimental to the shark diving industry. Major news websites and blogs have gone so far as to suggest that shark (cage) diving is “dangerous and terrifying”, “training sharks to eat people”, even claiming that accidents like this occur with regularity.
As an industry professional and passionate supporter of sustainable eco-tourism (in this case shark diving) I cannot abide these comments. Our industry regularly takes abuse from people who do not understand what it is we do. The shark diving industry is worth 200 million dollars annually worldwide and in many cases is responsible for helping police and protect dive sites and endangered animals from damage while channeling much needed money into research and conservation. There are certainly operators who could manage their businesses in a safer or more ethical way, but that is a subject for another discussion.
As far as Guadalupe goes the fact remains, in 2008 the Mexican government sent their Navy to enforce their new ‘no baiting’ guidelines. This was partly influenced by videos such as the ‘cage accident’. This decision is a threat to our industry and tourism operations, all of which help support local research and contribute funds to the Mexican economy and Guadalupe’s conservation.
The accident was an isolated incident that is extremely unlikely to happen again. Claims that the animal was at fault have no relevance whatsoever… the explanation is simply this:
This predator reacted to a stimulus which was placed too close to an obstruction giving it little to no time to react or turn to avoid collision. That’s it.
With a little care about the message we put out our industry could avoid a lot of the drama that it perpetuates. I stand by my comments on air as in the end I’d rather see an endangered and beautiful species of animal get off the proverbial hook for a change, if that means someone admits a one off mistake, so be it.
We have been tracking the spread of one of the worst cage breach videos ever to be caught on tape. The event happened at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico in 2007 and was posted on You Tube shortly after waiting for an editor or producer to take it mainstream.
That happened on Monday when the Times Online covered the video. What happened next is a classic case of viral negative media.
Today we'll be looking through the media lens on this event to highlight how far this video has spread-estimating the number of people who have been impacted.
Negative operational events (NOE's) affect the entire shark diving industry and ripple through the global media like wildfire. This is one example of how poor media handling immediately after an event has lead to the current negative media storm. Sadly, in the end, the sharks are the real victims here once again portrayed as 70's iconic, vicious killers.
Today is Wednesday December 10.2008-72 hours after the initial story broke in the U.K
1. Today Show NBC-USA viewers 4,910,000 2. Today Show NBC-USA viewers 4,910,000 (second show Dec 11) 3. CBS Evening News-USA viewers n/a 4. ABC Good Morning America viewers 5,656,000
A quick blog search shows this video on well over 400 blogs and video posts at this time. Estimated numbers of viewers is hard to count.
Summary
The coverage of this video by the mainstream media will burn out by the end of this week. The driving force behind this video's success has been CNN's Planet in Peril and a recent expose on cage diving in South Africa. The story will not end here. This video will now sit on literally thousands of servers across the planet with absolutely no chance of it being taken down.
"Post spin" after a negative operational event (NOE) is not effective. Viewers of this video make up their own minds based on the negative media in front of them and will continue to carry that view. The real tragedy here is the animal which was put into an "artificial situation" driving both the anti shark diving agenda, and the negative image of sharks.
Operators have a small window immediately after an event like this to control media should they choose to exercise this option. Failing to do so, as we have seen this week, damages everyone.
With just a few weeks until our 2011 white shark season at Isla Guadalupe celebrating a decade of successful operations on site we're pulling some old and not so old trip reports written by our divers so you can start getting excited.
