Hey We're Famous...and Being Ripped Off!

The worlds largest shark jaw goes on auction in a few weeks, and the good folks over at Heritage Auctions decided to "troll the internet" for images featuring sharks for their sales PSA.

One of those images belongs to writer and photographer Jim Cornfield, who shot an amazing two shot of our divers in 2009 with the vessel Horizon in the foreground at Isla Guadalupe.

A closer look reveals the background video shot by Richard Theiss from RTSea Productions who spent almost four years with Shark Diver at Isla Guadalupe carefully documenting the sharks here for his award winning documentary Island of the Great White Sharks.

Sigh.

The Cricket Two - 50K Final Bid?

When word came out notorious shark killer Frank Mundus estate was to sell the Cricket Two, as media folks, we became very interested.

As a pro shark media platform this vessels sordid shark history and back story would have been be a slam dunk. The vessel and captain that inspired the character Quint from Jaws made the acquisition of this vessel for shark conservation efforts more than an idea.

That's when things went wrong for us. The vessel went on the auction block with final bid numbers as high as 300K being tossed around by the media. We wanted nothing to do with that and made a preemptive offer in December of slightly more than 150K to the auctioneer via the Mundus estate.

We were turned down. Then a few weeks later out of the blue asked again if we wanted to get involved in the auction for the Cricket Two. The answer from our side was no, but was the estate looking for a preemptive buy out? No.

The auction for the Cricket Two is officially over. The winning bid $50,000. Less than the minimum 100K wanted by the Mundus estate. Today, as we feared, locals in the region are discussing a series of memorial shark fishing tournaments to raise the other $50,000 for the Cricket Two.

It would seem shark conservation will take a back seat to the Mundus legend - all for the lack of imagination of one auction house and the Mundus estate.

The offer was valid. Greed got in the way of acquiring the Cricket Two.