Calling All Industry Bloggers - Bring yer Red Meat!

Since 2008 this blog and quite a few others have brought three years of Industry Red Meat to the table.

The kind of blogging that informs, challenges, and sometimes even moves mountains.

Yes mountains. As in the recent trans disciplined, bi-coastal Red Meat Fest of the Oxy Shark Myth.

If you don't think that multi-blog expose fundamentally altered the way people propose shark conservation, you just haven't been paying attention.

Come to think of it, why the hell are you reading this post anyway?

Back to the providers of Red Meat.

We love you guys, and gals, and our blog roll reveals as much. For it is here you will find others who think, propose ideas, and bring to the table the discussions of the day that cause an entire industry and conservation niche to react, move, and consider.

It is also to be noted in an industry filled to the brim with those who are afraid to say what they want, paralyzed with fear at not being part of today's "in crowd", or just too bland to consider a life that has nothing in it but, "sail with the current winds," these few exceptional bloggers exhibit strong leadership for doing the complete opposite.

Life favors the brave, not those who join the pack and run with it until all their stripes fuse together to form one very large moving mass on the Golden Savannahs of Irrelevance (ya like that?).

It's good to shake things up once in a while.

So this is your chance. Get out there, make some noise, write about the things that that matter and make a difference.

Independent voices are the musical accompaniment to any industry including conservation.

You may not like the tune you are hearing all the time, but you have heard it and you had an opinion about it, and THAT dear readers is why Red Meat is so important.

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Red Truck Fly Fishing - Why We Fish

As the CEO of a shark diving company I have what many consider an "odd hobby" that has nothing to do with sharks, conservation, or even the dive world.

It is a hobby that has found me over the years at 12,000 feet chasing Golden Trout
on the side of a mountain, and on backwoods "roads" in the western states where only a Toyota 4Runner could navigate. It has found me on more rivers and lakes then I care to remember all over the planet, on snow lined banks in the dead of winter where the deep freeze crystallizes the earth, and sleeping trout slurp buggy nymph patterns. It has found me camping overnight on stream sides where the morning dew coats everything in a rain forest like embrace of perfect wetness.

My hobby is more than a hobby.

Over the years it has turned me into an entomologist, a naturalist, a geologist, and a river keeper. Up until now I have not been able to share my hobby with those outside the fly fishing world because it is a world that is hard to describe and even harder to capture visually...until now.

The good folks over at Red Truck Fly Fishing have managed the impossible and have captured my other world in fantastic and riveting detail.

Welcome to my other world:

Caught on Tape - Thresher Sharks Hunting

On a scale of cool shark videos this one ranks up there. Purported to have been shot off Pescador Island, it features a Thresher shark hunting with its tail, a unique adaptation and one rarely seen by divers.

Explains why fishermen on the west coast of the U.S, especially off La Jolla shores, often report tail hooking these animals:

Undersea Voyager Project - Website

The Undersea Voyager Project has a new updated website.

What is the Undersea Voyager Project?

Smart discoveries, intelligent investigations, and undersea adventure as few have seen before. Project leader Scott Cassel is no stranger to the wild world of the deep and is changing the perception of some of the oceans strangest critters one dive at a time.

Welcome to the Undersea Voyager Project.

Shark Diving Outside the Boundries

Recently I was at dinner in San Francisco with a group of friends and the topic of "the most exciting moment" came up. Being the owner of a shark diving company I have a few of these stories on tap, but none compare to Karly Stanley's submarine.

In 2005 I met Karl in Roatan, Honduras and enjoyed an evening with him at close to 2000' in the company of titanic sized six gill sharks. We had roped pigs heads to the side of the vessel and were being dragged down slope and into the abyss by a particularly large female.

That was in the early days, when the very idea of attracting huge sharks from the crushing deep seemed like an impossible endeavour.

The additional bonus is that Karls submarine was hand built by him, making the complete experience one that I have treasured my whole life.

Karls adventures would, eventually, grab the attention of filmmakers and television folks. This clip is from a unique documentary about Karl and his operation now available on Amazon.

Real animal adventures are harder to come by these days and I go to bed at night knowing that guys like Karl keep the flame alive and well, offering for the rest of us, by sheer force of genius and personality, the chance to enjoy an encounter with deepwater giants:

Shark Skin Tech and Fluid Dynamics

It is well known that sharks, after millions of years of evolution, have developed a remarkable skin that all but allows them to "slip" though the oceans.

For the folks who study fluid dynamics natures millions year old testing lab is a case for reverse engineering.

Armed with $200,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, the NASA Alabama Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research and the Lindbergh Foundation, researcher Amy Lang continues research on what designers of aircraft and underwater vehicles could learn by imitating nature's design of shark skins.

Lang is collaborating with Dr. Phil Motta, professor of integrative biology from the University of South Florida, and Dr. Robert Hueter, director of shark research for Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla.

Complete Story

Magnapinna Squid-Perhaps, Perhaps

We got the following email this morning about that face hugger critter found at 7800 feet back in November of 2007. We had an ident of Magnapinna perhaps the scariest looking critter you would ever not want to meet free diving at night. The email is from the ROV company who caught this on tape.

Now we're not so sure about the ident, here's the email, anyone out there know what this is?

Gentlemen,

I work as Senior Project Engineer for DOF Subsea Australia. I am on secondment to one of our companies in as you can see from my email signature below. We're an engineering and offshore services contractor to the oil and gas industry. We also perform all kinds of offshore work and recently you may have seen our team and one of our survey vessels was responsible for the locating of the HMAS Sydney. A long lost battleship of the Australian Navy that was sunk in battle in WW2.

We design and fabricate and install all manner of equipment and systems in all corners of the oceans. We have dedicated vessels from which we perform all our work and on these vessels we carry a full survey crew, an ROV crew for each onboard ROV, Saturation Diving crews, marine crew, deck crew and engineering staff. Within the travels we have collected large amounts of digital footage recorded from at least one of the 7 onboard cameras of the ROV(s) (some vessels have two) and share them amongst ourselves. I have attached the footage of the squid????? as described.

You can see from the title that the ROV boys have named it “Creature” you’ll see why. From the video overlay you can see the Eastings and Northings for the location in the Gulf from the onboard survey systems and the depth as recorded by the onboard ROV instruments.

Anyway if you can indent this let me know.

Company website

It's Not All Sharky...Wiley The Raccoon

This blog is 90% sharks and 10% "other".

Today we would like to introduce you to the other 10%. This little guy is "Wiley" (click image) a three week old Raccoon pup we rescued this summer.

His mother had been hit by a car while she was transporting her little brood and Wiley was the last pup left still alive when we discovered him on the roadside after spending a full day in the blazing sunshine.

Dehydrated, and almost dead, we took him home and got him back to the world of the living with some round the clock feedings and care.

Once we got little Wiley stable we shipped him off to Wild Care a fantastic local wildlife rehab non profit who took Wiley in and promptly renamed him "#211".

#211 grew up to be a fine outstanding member of the community with the dedicated help of Wild Care and was released a few months ago where we're sure he's raiding garbage cans with the best of them. For us, every time we hear the sound of cans being raided late at night, we think fondly back to this summer and an encounter with Wiley-211.

In this case wildlife conservation does begin at "home".

Underwater Website Of The Week

Daniel Botelho is from Rio de Janeiro "Land of the Carnival".

It's also the land of truly vibrant colors, which would explain the images in Daniels website all of which you'll probably need a pair of old school Ray-Bans to look at.

If you're like us you measure your time underwater in glorious weeks spent in exotic locals with dollar beers and lot's of sharks. If you're not perhaps these images will lead you there.

Welcome to your Underwater Moment of Zen..Rio Style!