Lemme try and be clear about this one.
Absolutely, unequivocally, emphatically: not with Beqa Adventure Divers, ever!!!
I feared something was brewing ever since some dude came to our booth at DEMA.
He claimed to be some travel agent for Ritter (surprise surprise: I'm quoting CDNN - and boy, did they nail this one!) and our reception was, uh, less than welcoming.
Looks like he then got lucky elsewhere.
According to this website (bottom - and no, do NOT bookmark it!!!), the only professional shark-human interaction specialist, or whatever, and his groupies are planning to come to Fiji next year.
Howz this for conservation snake oil!
Here's a piece of free advice to whoever may have taken that booking: You may as well kiss your reputation goodbye - the good news being that there's plenty of time to reconsider!
And yes, enough said!
Absolutely, unequivocally, emphatically: not with Beqa Adventure Divers, ever!!!
I feared something was brewing ever since some dude came to our booth at DEMA.
He claimed to be some travel agent for Ritter (surprise surprise: I'm quoting CDNN - and boy, did they nail this one!) and our reception was, uh, less than welcoming.
Looks like he then got lucky elsewhere.
According to this website (bottom - and no, do NOT bookmark it!!!), the only professional shark-human interaction specialist, or whatever, and his groupies are planning to come to Fiji next year.
Howz this for conservation snake oil!
Here's a piece of free advice to whoever may have taken that booking: You may as well kiss your reputation goodbye - the good news being that there's plenty of time to reconsider!
And yes, enough said!
6 comments:
I love how he starts off by rubbishing all other shark conservation efforts and then proceeds to produce one of the most uninspiring videos ever made. Well done Ritter you are indeed the one showing us all how to do shark conservation properly!
This is the guy who has dragged at least three shark conservation foundations thru the financial mud....getting what he could from them with his goofy science programs. Then trashes them and moves on to the next naive group. I noted on his web site a that there is a flurry of recent comments from him for March this year. Prior to that there is a 9 month silence from him. I speculate he was fishing for another group to squeeze money out of those 9 months. His general message about protecting sharks is a good one.....However there needs to be a message about protecting legitimate science based shark conservation groups from "Herr Doctor" Ritter!
Ritter is just one member of a looong list of people who, by their own actions, have done very bad things with sharks.
I am not sure if anyone out there has looked at the Ritter timeline and seen how his leg bite video lead to others who tried to emulate him or attempted to "prove," by often insane animal interactions, that sharks are not what they are - predators.
Like ripples in a pond those who conduct themselves badly with sharks often leave a legacy of media disturbance that causes even more harm for sharks in the long run.
We need not fear sharks, but we should respect them.
Ritters legacy still resonates to this day.
Hi Mike,
I had a quick look at the updated Ritter site, the last time I saw this was at the but end of a joke email from an industry member.
Seems like he has been busy with a few industry folks actually providing him a platform to run with this wild hair theories.
As I have said in the past and will say again, the littany of folks in our industry who will (for money) reward people who have done bad things with sharks knows no bounds.
All bow down to the almighty dollar servicing boat payments, ego, and media - but not the sharks.
Thing is, the guy is obviously quite crafty - like all successful conmen!
He's carved himself a nice little niche as the pied piper of Sharkitarianism, an astounding mixture of platitudes, romantic truisms and wacko "visionary" pseudo-scientific hypotheses all the way to excursions into human pseudo-psychology.
Quite a cocktail - and all so very New Age!
Indeed Patric - I can very much see the legacy!!!
I mean, seriously: did you really HEAR what he said in that video?
That the main obstacle to Shark conservation is our fear - which, coincidentally, he the great PhD guru could teach us to overcome???
And me silly, I thought it was the Asian demand for their fins??
Did anybody tell the guys in Doha?
No Anonymous, this is very much not pro-Shark messaging!
On the contrary, and this is the real insidiousness of what we could otherwise ignore as the ramblings of a lunatic: these idiotic theories and the mindset that goes with them fatally detract from finding real solutions in a real world.
Ritter's message remains one and the same: gimme the money!
He's screwed several NGOs, now he's screwing the public - and above all, he's screwing Shark conservation!
Think about it.
And here endeth the Monday sermon!
Amen brother, can I get a Sharkitarianism Testify!
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