Shark kills French diver in Marsa Alam

[Knuspar]

Yes, your ignorance must be blissful.

I would avoid trying to smear entire nations with your misguided views though.

That actually made me laugh .. vladimir said its chineese .. so he smears one country .. im just saying dont blame them alone, sure they might have "invented" it or whatever .. but they are not the only ones doing it.

I live in China, and it seems that for many northern Chinese this soup is not really all that popular. Apparently it is more of a delicacy in the southern parts of the country. I donÃÕ know if looking at where shark fin soup is served is really the correct way to isolate the problem and assign blame. I think China does deserve the blame for the desimation of sharks because the practice of finning springs from its culture, even if the the actual fishing takes place eslewhere or even if others partake in the soup as a one off.

The odds are the restuarants serving shark fin soup in the places you mention are catering to Chinese travelers anyway. And more than likely a bowl of this soup in Indonesia for example represents only a small portion of the sharks killed for their fins which are sent to China everyday. It is served all over the place in some parts of China.

The fact remains that the proliferation of finning practices has grown right along with the growing middle class in China, which has the unfortunate side effect of hearkening in people an archaic need to show prosperity in modern times using some ridiculous throwback to the emperors of yore. And unfortunately from my experience so far, things change very, very slowly in China, too slowly to hope that sharks can outlast the trend.

All of the finning practices that take place in South America, Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere happen as a direct result of the demand coming out of my host country which springs from this growing middle class. Taiwan seems to be a major driving force as well. And it isnÃÕ enough to simply not eat the soup in my opinion. If you see it on offer in an establishment somewhere, please tell the waiter or the owner that you think it is a terrible practice and leave. That is what I forced my soon to be in-laws to do when I saw shark fin soup on the menu in Langkawi on my last holiday. The waiter wasnÃÕ too happy, which I hope translates into a change in practice if more people do the same.

Cheers!

Interesting reading, and i appreciate your approach by telling them to stop serving it. Personally i just walk straight by if i ever see shark on the menu.
Thanks for sharing the info.

It's served in Denmark too - shall we smear Danes?

Some of us have lived and worked in a lot of the countries you name, and you're just talking the most incredible rubbish. Do you really think most people in Thailand and Philippines can afford to eat shark fin soup? Sure - it might be served in a few high end Chinese restaurants in those countries but then again we could eat it in America and every European country too.

Smear away .. I am not pointing out nations as yourself .. I am saying the individuals who contribute to create the demand for shark fins are the ones to blame.

The fact that you somehow read my posts as an attack on some countries is just downright sad and wrong.

It does not make it right if its a dane, american, chinesse or japanese or whatever that eats shark fin soup .. all who do contribute to the demise of sharks, which im pretty sure we all agree on is wrong?

I used Wikipedia as an example of a minimum of evidence, which you have yet to meet. If you have a peer-reviewed study you can cite, that would be great.

I don't have any reviewed study .. im just a ordinary guy whos concerned about anything related to nature. Just like 99% of the rest of scubaboards.com's users.

Still claiming its only Chinese eating sharkfin soup is wrong.

I dont intend to write more in this thread, seems as if some individuals just want to misinterpret what i write ...

the short point is: sad about the french diver who died, shame on all people who run around feeding the sharks for whatever reason they have, and double shame on the people who catch sharks 1. for the fun of it, 2. for their fins .. well .. in total .. shame on all who hurt the oceans in one way or another!

No blue - No green

 

[lemon]

It's served in Denmark too - shall we smear Danes?

Some of us have lived and worked in a lot of the countries you name, and you're just talking the most incredible rubbish. Do you really think most people in Thailand and Philippines can afford to eat shark fin soup? Sure - it might be served in a few high end Chinese restaurants in those countries but then again we could eat it in America and every European country too.

I don't think its a smear. That said, I think we're missing the point. The Japanese are certainly killing a lot of sharks in their shark fishing industry. Of course, it's not just shark. The sushi industry, of which japan is a big part, is putting a lot of pressure on all variety of fishery stocks. It's driving some species to the brink of collapse - i.e. bluefin tuna,etc.

 

[Dadvocate]

Knuspar

Interesting reading, and i appreciate your approach by telling them to stop serving it. Personally i just walk straight by if i ever see shark on the menu.
Thanks for sharing the info.

Yes, but you can’t always know this from the front of the restaurant. In this particular case, we had to be seated to see the menu.

That actually made me laugh .. vladimir said its chineese .. so he smears one country .. im just saying dont blame them alone, sure they might have "invented" it or whatever .. but they are not the only ones doing it.

First let me say that I don’t think it is a smear to point out that a particular country or countries is/are acting in a particular way relative to others.

It isn’t an implication through “invention”. The Chinese rise in market share over the last 20 odd years has the added effect of making things that were once out of the reach for average Chinese now much more affordable. The unfortunate consequence of this is that China’s overall desire for shark fin soup has increased as well. You seemed to have missed that part in my first post.

If you get a chance to see “Sharkwater” I’d recommend it. The film (as but one source) shows how China’s rise in economic power has led to other countries (such as Costa Rica) overlooking their own fishing regulatory practices in order to stay in good favor with the Chinese. This in part leads to these countries allowing a careless and wasteful proliferation of shark fishing to take place in their territories, using long lining no less.

So on the one hand you are right, China can’t be blamed for the Costa Rican government’s decision to allow this to take place, but they can be blamed for creating the environment where this kind of thing takes place on the whole, especially when the vast majority of fins ends up in China (for this post consider Taiwan part of mainland China).

This is where I disagree with you.

I am a US citizen, and I am sure that people could allude to these types of practices by my country in other contexts as well. Does this automatically mean that the US is a terrible country? I’d say no. And speaking from my experiences in China so far, the people here tend not to appreciate wasteful behavior. Things are hard to get here on the whole, so this practice would be less appreciated by the average Chinese person than one might think. The fact is they probably have little to no idea how the shark fins are being acquired. They are just thinking about how nice it is to now be able to afford symbols of affluence when this was not the case even ten years ago. Which culture on this planet hasn’t been guilty of this kind of shortsightedness from time to time?

That point conceded, you seem hung up on this idea that China shouldn’t be blamed for all this when shark fin soup can be found everywhere. By way of an analogy, allow me to use my own country one more time. The United States consumes more the 25% of the world’s produced energy annually. Denmark significantly less. If I were to say that Denmark’s responsibility for reduced carbon emissions ought to be the same as the United States because Denmark “uses energy too”, would you find this a good argument? If you don’t perhaps you see the scope of the issue better than before.

Cheers!

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/red-sea/287615-shark-attack-st-johns-red-sea.html

 

[KaitsuK]

I was one week before diving at the same site with our Finnish team, which was doing our fourth liveboard trip to Red Sea, with Emperor. During one of our dives we faced also Oceanic White Tip (which had followed us ca 15 kilometers from other reef) "very closely". We identified this shark to be same in these two reefs, as it had "defected" left side fin.

Nevertheless, that shark was really interested in to get contact to one of our team members. I succeeded to take the situation to video (!).

Later on I'll put available the complete video in Full HD, but now there is ca 2-minute clip which can be watched from one of the Finnish evening papers website called Iltalehti. (unfortunately it seems, that as I'm new member here, I'm not allowed to send web link ?!! I would be happy to share my video...)

In this case our teammate hit three times the shark to head with camera housing, and kicked once. Then the shark went ca 60 meters away, but started to came again... Luckily, our zodiac came "Just on time" and our friend was able to go there. We others waited until the shark went away (after patrolling some time around the zodiac), and then rised to surface and to zodiac... heart beating quite fast... ;-)

Kai

 

[Dadvocate]

Welcome to SB, Kai!

I'd be very interested in that video if the time comes when you can post it.

Cheers!

 

[farsidefan1]

reporting hijacked thread

 

[Knuspar]

reporting hijacked thread

the finish guy mentioning a incident about the behavior of a oceanic white tipped is no different that the discussion about what countries are involved in shark finning ..

What I'm saying is, you should have reported this thread ages ago...


On topic: Id love to see that video, its not the first time i ever heard of longimanus acting like this, don't forget it is indeed a opportunistic shark. You should have gotten out of the water asap it started to be too curious

Good thing all went well.

 

[vladimir]

Welcome to SB, Kai!

I'd be very interested in that video if the time comes when you can post it.

Cheers!

Yes, welcome to ScubaBoard. I'd like to see the video too. I am sure nobody would mind if you just posted four times using at least 5 characters, like this:

.....

and then the video.

They'd be about as useful as the average ScubaBoard post anyway.

 

[Scubakevdm]

This is how the trade goes for a French live-aboard operator in the red sea
YouTube - PlongñÆ Requin de nuit elphinstone Egypte-Night shark dive elphinstone reef Egypt
Joomeo - Photo sharing / Partage de photos

Thank you for providing us with a glimpse of reality. Taken with Samaka's remarks it seems to me to paint a picture of recklessness. Whether or not the particular operation that the unfortunate snorkeler was diving from was engaging in this type of activity is moot. Someone was doing it, and that was enough to impact the animal's behavior. I think it would be very difficult to argue that the activities portrayed in the photos that you linked and the attack on the snorkeler were unrelated.

Before we get a slew of "Let's not jump to conclusions, they could have been drying the chicken part out in the salt air just above the water to make chicken jerky." or " The guy could have been tanning his hand over the side of the boat and the shark might have swam right in to it." responses let me make one more remark:

When we change the behavior of animals, in the end it is inevitably the animals who will pay for it. It is our responsibility, in my opinion to tread as lightly as we can and to minimize our impact wherever we dive.