Hawaii - Hobbling through conservation and commercial shark diving

Small island politics often breed strange laws, and non stranger then the seven anti-shark diving bills currently circulating through Hawaii's political center in Oahu.

At least one politician sensing the oncoming political circus surrounding sharks has added an anti-shark fin bill to the mix, that's the only good shark news coming from this island.

RTSea's Blog covered the entire political mess nicely in a post last week. Fine reading and summary of small island politics at it's best or absolute worst, depending if you happen to care about sharks, tourism, conservation, and good old fashioned mid term electioneering.

Read here.

David Diley - Smart Industry Call

In the world of commercial shark diving there are those who lead by example. There are also those who lead by producing solid industry thought and analysis (click image to read).

David Diley is one of those people.

A man who has looked at the global shark diving industry and who has distilled it's biggest issue down to a well thought Op Ed.

We would like to congratulate him on his ideas this month and fearless interpretation of our industries future and direction.

This blog along with a few others have been advocating for deep changes within our industry. One year later it would seem that we're having an effect.

As we close out 2009 and a decade that has seen shark diving grow from a few pioneers and into a global 300 million dollar tourism juggernaut it is time to streamline and manage this industry.

The scuba industry did it and most other high profile tourism industries have done the same.

Make no bones about it, commercial shark diving is not scuba diving and it never was, therefore it is up to our industry to guide and direct it's own future.

With 2010 right around the corner the fusion of a commercial shark diving guiding body along with shark conservation would be a powerful force to content with, and would go a long way to growing this industry into 2020 and beyond.

Solid vision for the future and thinkers like David Diley will get us there.

Thanks to Da Shark for the original post.

Shark Conservation Coverage - Al Jazeera

Surprising and in depth front line coverage of the shark situation in Palau, recently declared a shark sanctuary. As we have said many times in the past shark tourism is a viable bridge solution to sustianable fisheries. When local and regional fishermen have the financial incentive to save sharks they are more than likely to push back against outside fisheries.

Maui Bans Shark Tourism - Surfer Attacked by Shark

Not weeks after Maui City Council members voted to ban non existent commercial shark diving to "protect swimmers and divers" in Maui - a surfer was bitten this morning by an estimated 6-8 foot sand shark.

He was surfing in the "Kalama Bowls" area of a local beach park shortly after 6:00 a.m. when he was bitten on the upper right thigh and the lower part of his right ankle, according to Maui County officials.

The unfortunate negative intersection of sharks and humans will continue to happen regardless of commercial shark diving operations in any given area.

Maui has never had commercial shark diving in it's waters.

Shark do not target humans as a general rule.

Maui's political decision to ban shark diving was just that, a political decision, and with this mornings unfortunate incident proved one thing for certain...sharks do not regard political decisions.

Commercial shark diving is under assault by a global anti-shark diving lobby that trades in on the fear of sharks. When bans are proposed "public safety" is touted as the net benefit to the community at large.

With this latest case in Maui, the anti-shark diving lobby has been exposed for what they are.

Simply put, purveyors of fear based nonsense.