The Reef - When White Sharks Attack?

Thanks to eagle eye blog reader John Willis who sent us the following link for a new film in production, "The Reef."

We'll let the producers notes explain this new shark film to you. Suffice to say unless there's a 30 minute moment where main characters discover an Asian Fin Raider fleet decimating regional sharks and save the day by protecting these magnificent animals, we're pretty sure this will be a Jaws-light affair.

Just in time for 2010.

The guiding principles of THE REEF

Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Some of my thinking behind the movie.

The production of this film is guided by three principles:

Suspense and Psychological Horror

The main principal of good horror and suspense is that the audience’s imagination is a much more potent tool than special effects and “monster” shots. In other words the best way to build fear and dread is by focussing on small events and leaving “space” for the audience’s imagination to run wild. Like Jaws, Alien and all good horror-thrillers, The Reef will generate suspense and tension by holding back the presence of the “monster” and focussing on the fears of the main characters.

Realism

Rather than being heavily theatrical, The Reef will be written as realistic as possible, sticking to its simple and raw premise without being burdened with artificial themes. I want the audience to feel this true event. I want them to think, imagine if this happened to me, what would I do?

Characters

We want to make sure that the four main characters in this tale are all real characters with natural vulnerabilities that the audience can and will empathise with them.

Sharks-Taking a Leadership Position

This morning we read an astonishing post by a shark diving operation in Fiji. As we have come to learn "the hard way" the commercial shark diving world has a similar unsaid credo to that once uttered by Ronald Reagan-"Speak no ill of fellow shark diving operations". Or put less succinctly by those still in the 80's mindset to our industry,"Mind your own goddamn business".

Commercial shark diving has evolved from a few maverick shark divers, who showed the way back in the late 70's, to an actual $200 million dollar global industry. It's a hard fact few within our industry fully comprehend the magnitude of.

Unfortunately, our industry is also at point in time where our actions are inspiring an entire generation of up and coming operators and underwater photographers. In many cases they are being inspired to attempt animal encounters that will inevitably lead to spectacular and unfortunate events.

It has happened already and the perception of sharks when this happens dumps them back into stone age erasing years of positive shark messaging and pro shark efforts. It's a classic Catch 22. The desire by some for closer encounters with top predators to educate the public these animals are not killers, which inevitably leads to an accident or outright attack on a diver, which then destroys the animals reputation once again.

The two burning issues that most commercial shark diving operations fail to realize are the following:

1. Due to the nature of what we do we are high value targets for the media and for misguided wildlife advocates.

2. Regardless of where you have a shark operation your actions ripple through a global industry. This is a fact.

I have to hand it to Beqa Adventure Divers for taking the stance they have taken. We have been strong advocates for industry standard protocols with macro sharks like Tigers, Bulls and Great Whites. On the flip side the imagery taken by Amanda Cotton was stunning and one might argue several of her images will do great things to change peoples perception of sharks.

As we have said in the past there's a "line in the sand" between what we do as commercial shark diving operators with the general public and needs of commercial underwater photography. We covered this same issue last month.

What we do with sharks should be based first and foremost on long term sustainability not a "run of good luck".

Guadalupe Island-Sharks, Tuna, Wildlife

Isla Guadalupe is wild place. Big game fishermen come here looking for monster tuna, divers come here looking for the sharks that sometimes feed on the tuna.

Occasionally the two meet at the same place at the same time, usually with spectacular results as a recent article in 976-TUNA will attest:

"Guadalupe Island provides both agony and ecstasy for anglers fishing its waters. The weather can be flat calm or brutal. The fishing can be epic or dismally slow. The dolphins, fur seals, elephant seals, whales, great whites, sea birds and flying fish provide continual entertainment for the naturalist in all of us."

For those few who have witnessed the sudden and very violent 2300lb addition to their catch, these words are nothing short of poetic.

Shark Capital of the World-Volusia Florida

"You say Barracuda people say hun, what?...You say shark"...heck you know the rest.

So what's up with Volusia County, Florida anyway? This year they celebrated, or rather completely ignored the fact they have become the defacto shark bite capitol of America with a record 22 bites (no deaths) and counting as of last month.

What's a seaside county to do?

We say embrace your sharks and do several things:

1. Adopt the sharks. People will come for miles to see sharks, shark tourism will boost your local economy by at least 20%

2. Educate your tourist. What an amazing platform to educate people about sharks and sytematically debunk the fears of sharks

3. Celebrate the Volusia County Shark Festival-that's a novel idea

Now we know there are many of you reading this saying "you're crazy", perhaps we are. But we are also veteran commercial shark guys who have been in adventure tourism for almost 18 years. We know what works when it comes to sharks and shark tourism.

If you look on the counties website you'll note an almost 1970's whitewash about sharks, attacks, and the beaches of Volusia.

"Shark tourism" is not a bad word, and when the city managers in Volusia come to realize this they will also come to understand the power of the shark for commercial and sustainable gain.

Benthic Cage Design-Open Source

With our 2008 Tiger Beach season just a few months away we thought we would share our Bahamas Benthic Cage Design with you.

Called the "Alamo" this open top cage system sits on the bottom and allows divers who are not as comfortable as seasoned shark diving professionals to enjoy close macro shark species interactions with all the benefits of a shark cage.

We pioneered the concept of Safe and Sane Shark Diving (tm) a few years ago. The understanding is that close predator interactions with macro sharks such as Tigers and Bulls need to have a "defined space" between the animals and divers. It's an approach geared towards sustained commercial shark diving with these animals.

Safe and Sane Shark Diving (tm) does not allow pre-predatory investigative bumps by Tigers on divers. Euphemistically called "love taps" by some operations we feel these closer interactions on a broad based commercial level is in the long term not sustainable.

The goal of our operation is to see sustainable solutions with macro shark species. As such we are making the Alamo Design by Luke Tipple an open source design for use by any operation that would like it. We'll email any operation the full cage design specs and site design specs should you request them.

Isla Guadalupe Trip Update 9.2009

The situation at Isla Guadalupe remains unchanged at this time. As we have been reporting the chum ban for all fleet vessels is in effect. That's the latest news.

There are many efforts right now within Mexico to get clarification on this issue and to get it resolved and we may see a break as soon as next week.

We got a trip report from one of our divers yesterday. Steffen is from Europe and was literally "in the area" when he booked his trip with us on board the MV Horizon last month. This was his first encounter with the Great Whites so he had big expectations.

Regardless of the recent shark site politics this has been a great season down there as always:

Hey Patric

I't was a fantastic trip. We saw alot of sharks (on every dive, except one) and it was everything I had hoped it would be, and more. They are truly facinating animals. Also, everybody in the crew was both very proffessional and helpfull, and they were a big part of making this trip an unforgetable experience. Thinking back on this, one thing that really stands out, was the level of information we recieved about the sharks and the respect they were handeled with by the crew. All in all, it was truly an unforgettable trip, and I'm am certainly not done with shark diving. So I want to thank both you and the crew for making this happen.

Best regards
Steffen Nielsen

Editors Note: Happy to help Steffen-where are you this week?

Growing number of aquariums open tanks to divers

We have been blogging about this ongoing debate for the past year. This morning the Associated Press has come out with an article that takes on the newest trend in scuba diving-Commercial Aquarium Diving:

1. Sharky Commercial Aquarium Trends

2. The futue of commercial shark diving?

3. Aquarium's Get Into The Action $$$ For Sharks

4. Georgia Aquarium-Calling Bullshit!

AP Report:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Still enthralled, Debra Kurtz described how a 6-foot-long zebra shark, a predator that patrols the western Pacific and Indian oceans, swam around her head.

Then there was the playful 300-pound, green sea turtle, an endangered species from tropical waters, that kept trying to crawl underneath her as she knelt in the sand.

Her favorites, though, were the angelfish, which clustered around her to take sand showers, swimming through the grains of sand she let slip through her fingers.

Not bad for an hour's worth of scuba diving. The 44-year-old sales and marketing management consultant from Vernon Hills, Ill., was a guest diver at the National Aquarium in Baltimore while on a recent business trip. A growing number of aquariums across the country from Denver to Duluth, from Long Island to Tampa are opening their exhibit tanks to certified scuba divers.

Shark Marketing Hits 2 Million

An experiment in commercial shark diving marketing has just hit the 2 million plus mark and launched a career in television for Dive Operations Manager Luke Tipple. A huge Hat Tip to the guys at 689Design Adam and Zander-two L.A based marketing gurus who know what works.

Our main company and brand Shark Diver has recently split into it's Newco Shark Divers offering film and television shark diving support and consulting to the global shark diving industry. After many successful years in commercial shark diving and quite a few consulting and film projects behind us-we put together a great little team to offer a "one stop shop" at Shark Divers.

Don't take our word for it-we'll let these guys introduce us from our last project.