The Today Show - Industry Speaks Out

Continuing fallout from The Today Show

It may surprise you to discover that the $200 million dollar global shark diving industry does not have a governing body.

It does not even have a membership email list.

Our industry exists as an amorphous and growing group of well meaning entrepreneurs - worldwide.

Throughout the years this most unlikely of international adventure travel industries has seen it's share of regional political defeats, accidents, and triumphs. For the most part, and most remarkably, the industry has organically evolved into what you see today.

This "evolution" away from the early days of the Commercial Cowboys offering extreme encounters for quick bucks and notoriety - has lead to a more modern and media savvy commercial shark diving industry guided by the "Three Tenets" adopted by forward thinking operations:

1. Commercial shark diving operations

2. Local and regional conservation efforts

3. Local and regional shark diving politics

Our industry is also under siege. Externally, by a rampant media machine that hungers for anti-shark and sensationalist shark stories, and internally, by a few misguided and abjectly ignorant shark diving operators who fail to think beyond tomorrow and into the next decade.

They are the holdovers of the Cowboy Shark Diving Era.

It is time for this to end. We, as commercial operators, are the masters of our own destiny and 2008-9 has been a bad year for industry shark media both in the mainstream press and elsewhere. What is bad for our industry is ultimately bad for sharks.

For those who have not yet come to understand how our industry has evolved we will say it again. EVOLVE - your antics are being watched, recorded, and used in ways you have never imagined to the detriment of us all and to the ultimate detriment of the very animals we make a living from.

Today another industry voice weighed in on this issue. We are glad to see industry members demanding change - hopefully these demands will not fall on deaf ears. The industry can ill afford more ongoing and negative press seen around the globe - generated by a few bad actors.

RTSea also weighed in this afternoon.

Shark Tourism - On The Media "Today Show"

Question: Are the media pro shark or anti shark?

Answer: Anti shark

For commercial shark diving operators worldwide the answer to this question would seem obvious. For the past decade the media has shown little interest in correcting the ongoing and rampant shark killing stigma of the Jaws Legacy.

When it comes down to hype and the media's lifeblood, advertising sales, nothing compares to a shark attack on a human. These gruesome media packages dive slow news cycles and explode worldwide with the speed of Santa Ana wildfires.

Knowing this there is absolutely no excuse for shark diving operators who allow negative shark images and video to be presented to the media without any direction or industry leadership. In a word this is, "criminal behaviour" towards the very animals that we as commercial shark diving operators spend years attempting to show in a different light.

If the commercial shark diving industry is to continue with operators enjoying offshore operations in countries that are not their own such as the Bahamas and Mexico this kind of blatant, inexcusable and criminal media mismanagement must end.

The future of two of the western hemispheres best known shark sites absolutely depends on it...and we are losing this battle. A veritable flood of questionable images and video have come out of the Bahamas, Tiger Beach site recently. This dive site is still under a C and D that all but demands shark protocols for operators and is still under regulatory decision making by the Bahamian government.

Why operators are allowing disturbing video's and images that abjectly defy this Cease and Desist order to be posted on public sites, with little thought towards blow back, will most likely be discussed (heatedly) when this site is shut down.

For commercial shark diving operators whose media skills are not up to the task you have two options.

1. Leave the industry.
2. Clean up your act.

Case in point the Today Show on MSNBC this morning recycling a horrific cage breach video from Isla Guadalupe. This mornings show was watched by 5,998,000 people in the USA alone. Major media is not to blame here. Without the negative images and video we provide them with they cannot skillfully move forward with their well know agenda.

Having a commercial shark diving operation present them with a video now used to promote and highlight anti shark agendas in Australia will lead to the death of sharks. The true horror of negative shark media.

Responsibility for what becomes anti shark media begins and ends with the operator:

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