Yes there is plenty of silliness, opinions, glittering generalities, faulty conclusions, conjecture, lack of consistency and hypocrisy being floated in this thread but the truth is it's coming from many directions.
For example I have to agree with “yardpro” this statement has no relevance to shark baiting
“It is just like the fools who run the buflaoo in out west and wonder why there is a movement to ban snowmobiles,”
It might work for a discussion of say “the artificial feeding of hay to Bison” there is of course no such animal as a “Buflaoo”. Not to mention yes , there was a movement to ban snowmobiles specifically in Yellowstone Park, but not in general area of “out west” And in fact the result is a new Park policy in the reduction of the number of snowmobiles ( 50)allowed per day, the noise level (67 db) and speed (25 mph).
But on the other hand claiming
(“We need to make people understand that sharks are a critical piece of the marine ecosystem and they need to be protected.”
I think every one would agree And (
“I want sustainable fishing for sharks” )I would agree with also.
Unfortunately the above statements are in direct contradiction to-
“I FULLY support the commercial and recreational harvest of sharks..” (without further qualification), is within itself almost a complete contradiction in mutually exclusive terms.
The truth is currently due to lack of ability of enforcement of international treaties, regulations and guidelines . Shark populations are in severe decline world wide. Sadly without actual enforcement of current regs. And the implementation of science driven as opposed to politically driven regs. There will most likely be little to no recreational shark harvesting to be found in the not to distant future. Perhaps you ment to say “ I fully support regulated and enforced, science based sustainable, commercial and recreational harvest of sharks.”
To put things in perspective Any time we humans enter a wild environment . By our mere presence and nothing more, we are creating an artificial interaction and are in fact to some measure, altering the natural behavior of the inhabitants of the area period. It does not matter weather we are merely observing, photographing, baiting, or spearfishing, we are all there, altering the behavior and
exploiting that environment, for our own personal entertainment and pleasure.
It’s for damn sure those inhabitants did not ask us to be there nor does our presence directly benefit them , for any reason and the truth is, only our total absence truly represents an exploitation/free activity. Anything else, is a matter of degrees of exploitation.
Yes one side effect of human presence is the possible contribution to greater public awareness ,support and enforcement of protections, none the less it still involves exploitation for entertainment.
For example considering all of the environmental pollution and destruction required in the activity just get us to a wild place, it’s a bit hypocritical to arbitrarily start pointing fingers at particular activities we perhaps emotionally don’t agree with.
