Yesterday, we sold the last spaces for this years Great White Shark expeditions to Guadalupe Island.It didn’t take long for our phones to ring, with divers asking us to add another trip to our schedule. So we decided to run another expedition from Nove…
We always hear about “shark scares” in the media. In Western Australia, the government is conducting a highly controversial shark cull, mostly because of fear that sharks are bad for business.
shark diving, swimming with sharks is fun, cage diving, bull sharks
So I was quite surprise to see this headline “Shark sightings off Cape Cod a boon for tourism“
The East Valley Tribune writes “ In “Jaws,” the fictional mayor tried to protect the summer tourism season by keeping a lid on reports of the man-eater lurking offshore. As sightings of great white sharks mount off Cape Cod in real life, however, businesses in the Massachusetts town of Chatham are embracing the frenzy.”
Maybe the Western Australia government should visit Chatham Mass. and talk to their businesses. They would hear that instead of the great white sharks scaring tourists away, they actually attract them.
Shark T-shirts are everywhere, “Jaws” has been playing in local theaters and boat tours are taking more tourists out to see the huge seal population that keeps the sharks coming. Harbormasters have issued warnings but — unlike the sharks in the movies — the great whites generally are not seen as a threat to human swimmers.
No sensational headlines, no mass hysteria, no loss of business. Why don’t we see more of this kind of reporting in the media?
A local business man is quoted as saying: “I mean, truthfully, we’ve probably grown about 500 percent in terms of the sale of our shark apparel,” he said. The T-shirts, hoodies, hats, belts, dog collars and other accessories bear the iconic, torpedo-shaped image of great whites and sell for between $10 and $45.
Read the entire article here
It’s nice to see that an entire community has been embracing the great white sharks and found a way to use them to their benefit. This is an example, how humans and nature can benefit from each other. The people have a booming economy and the sharks don’t get culled. Are you listening, Western Australia?
Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO Shark Diver
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 staff@sharkdiver.com.
A swimmer in Manhattan Beach, CA was bitten this morning by a juvenile great white shark! Predictably, the headlines are screaming “Shark Attack Injures Swimmer!” and “Swimmer Attacked by Shark!”
Here is what actually happened. A man, fishing from the pier, caught a juvenile great white shark and was fighting it for 40 minutes. Trying to get away, the shark started biting at the line and in doing so, bit a swimmer. It is illegal to fish for great white sharks in California. Here is an excerpt from the California Fish and Game regulations.
“As defined in state law, “take” means “hunt, pursue, catch, capture, or kill or attempt to hunt, pursue, catch, capture, or kill.” Anyone who takes a white shark without a permit may be cited for violations of CESA and subject to criminal prosecution”
As usual, when something happens with a white shark, the shark gets the blame, not the fisherman who was endangering the public, by fighting a great white shark in waters crowded with swimmers on a holiday weekend! The headlines should read something like this “Illegal shark fishing causing serious harm to swimmer!”
Luckily the swimmer has non life-threatening injuries and we hope he’ll have a speedy recovery.
Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO
Shark Diver
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 staff@sharkdiver.com.
The submission period for public co…
Shark Diver Just finished a trip to tiger beach in the Bahamas, where we encountered up to 6 tiger sharks at a time.Chris and Euse were freediving during our expedition and have written about their experience here.They have also taken this amazing pict…
The story that a tagged great white shark has been eaten by another great white shark is making headlines around the world. Various news outlets like UPI are reporting that “Australian scientists are searching for a “mystery sea monster” that likely devoured a nine-foot-long great white shark they’d been tracking.” and People magazine is saying it was a “colossal cannibal great white shark” and even stating that it’s size is “estimated at 16 feet long and over 2 tons”
Wow, that is amazing! They not only know that this shark has been killed, they also know what killed it and even estimate the size of the killer. How the heck did they do that? Estimate the size and species of a predator by the temperature of a tag. And here I was, finding it incredible that another guy claims to be able to do that by the shape of a dorsal fin.
So let’s look at a few facts. The great white sharks do indeed maintain a body temperature of a few degrees above the water temperature. According to Elasmo-research.org, great white sharks maintain a muscle temperature of 7-9 degrees f, and a stomach temperature of 13-25 degrees f above water temperature. The scientists claim that the tag could not have fallen off, because it would have recorded a lower temperature first, before the jump to the higher temperature, after it was eaten. So if that were true, that would put the maximum temperature inside a great white shark stomach at 64 degrees and not 78.
Since the tags we are talking about here, are external, they record the temperature of the water and not that of the sharks muscle. Therefore, they would not have recorded a lower temperature after falling off. The fact that it plummeted straight down to 1900 feet is a further indication that the tag fell off. If another shark had attacked this 9+ ft great white, there would have been a struggle and they would not just have plummeted down. Also, the typical attack behavior of a great white shark is to strike and let the prey die, not fight with it and take it down deep.
Having watched great white sharks at Isla Guadalupe for 13 years, I’ve seen them fight, bite each other and noticed that the smaller sharks tend to stay away from the bigger ones. Those actions always seemed to be a way to establish the pecking order and not an attempt to kill and eat the other shark. As a matter of fact, when we encountered a dead shark a number of years ago, all the other sharks stayed away from the area for a while, indicating that they weren’t comfortable being in an area with a dead one of their own.
I have no problem saying that I have no idea what happened to this shark, but for the scientists to state that a “colossal cannibalistic shark” ate this individual, simply because of the temperature recording of a tag, is not very scientific at all.
This whole thing happened 9 years ago. So why is this all over the news now? Well, according to People, The Smithsonian Channel repackaged an Australian documentary called The Search for the Ocean’s Super Predator into another doc called Hunt for the Super Predator.
So all this is done to promote a “documentary” by the Smithsonian channel. Why am I not surprised that after “Nat. Geo” and “The Discovery Channel” they are just going after sensational headlines to boost their ratings as well. Let’s just scare the heck out of people by letting them believe that there are monsters lurking in the Ocean. It’s not like people don’t have an irrational fear of sharks already. It’s not like they are killing sharks based on this irrational fear. No, they need to stoke that fear so that they can sell their stupid “documentary”. Damn the consequences!
Cheers,
Martin Graf
CEO
Shark Diver
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 staff@sharkdiver.com
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