Mantripping - Shark Diver Interview

Mantripping.com is a website for guys who travel. Let's face it, your average red-meat-eating guys travel needs are different from girls. Heck we deserve our own website dedicated to the coolest guy travel adventures around.

Not surprisingly that's where you'll also find Shark Diver this month talking sharks with the crew from Mantripping.com. The online interview talked a lot about our industry, the past, present and future of shark diving and some off hand observations about travel in general.

For all you sharky gals out there, we know you like to shark dive as well - look for an article next month in a well known gals magazine. We'll tell you about it when it launches.

Mantipping Interview

Rodney Fox - Industry Leadership

This week The Age newspaper in Australia featured an outstanding article on white sharks and commercial shark diving operator Rodney Fox.

Along with son Andrew, the Foxes have remained stand alone industry leaders to shark conservation efforts and the perception of sharks in general. Their operation remains a template for doing things right with big predatory animals.

Some excerpts from the article:

When people come out with us, we make an effort to calm it down to a sort of spiritual, eco-tourism experience. Everybody wants to see sharks jumping up in the air, smashing into the cages, biting the platform, breaking teeth.

So we have to tell people: You're not allowed to touch the sharks. We're not allowed to make them jump out of the water. If we do, the sharks bash themselves up and go away, and it's a lack of respect for such a majestic animal.

Complete Article.

Island of The Great White Shark-Documentary

Richard Theiss producer of the documentary Island of the Great White Shark will be at the Birch Aquarium (Scripps) tomorrow night screening his new film to an almost sold out audience.

For the past few days he's been on television talking about his film. Tomorrow morning he'll be on Fox News 5 in San Diego.

You can find his recent interviews with:

San Diego 6
KUSI San Diego

Always a passionate advocate for sharks and the oceans. His documentary remains one of the few in depth looks into the secret world of great white shark without the hype.

Nicole, Ripley, Linda, Adam, Lola, Stacy, Brooby

This is the sat tagging and tracking map (click for full size) of several Tiger sharks tagged and tracked in Australia courtesy of The Undersea Explorer Shark Research Program.

From their website:

This project has been funded and conducted by Undersea Explorer through adventure diving tourism. Public awareness of shark conservation needs have been highlighted through the involvement of recreational divers and the production of international film documentaries and articles.

The experience of divers on these liveaboard diving adventures has been heightened by interaction with the scientists, quality interpretive presentations and exciting and unique shark diving.

Editors Note: Shark research and tourism work.

Scuba Diving Magazine-Guadalupe Coverage

Editor Travis Marshall with Scuba Diving Magazine broke the Isla Guadalupe chumming controversy in September.

In the next few months more articles about this ongoing declaration and controversy with the MX Navy banning chumming at this pristine site will be forthcoming.

Our goal is to keep divers informed and direct the conversation into sustainable solutions. If this unique dive site is to survive and flourish cross border cooperation and unified direction will have to happen here.

The options for not doing anything are no longer available. As we have been blogging about for a while now, the commercial shark diving industry is linked. What happens at one site reverberates around the world to others.

The fate of the ban on chumming is being eagerly watched by proponents for and against commercial shark diving worldwide.

Gay Friendly Shark Diving-Kudo's

Sometimes the industry surprises you. This morning was one example.

Kudo's to African Shark Eco Charters for taking the lead in Gay Friendly travel initiatives.

For years we have hosted gay couples on our vessels but never thought to "market to" this savvy well heeled crowd who, if the travel stats are correct, account for close to $200 million worldwide.

Wow, there's a market, and Kudo's again to the guys in South Africa who are making that market work for them.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we have some website changes to make.