Ritter and the Enablers

Lookee lookee – the Sharkitarians are on the move!

These are the upcoming trips of Ritter’s Sharkschool – and what is more interesting, the names of the enablers!
Don’t get me wrong, if a bunch of whackos want to go on a dive cruise or book a nice hotel in the tropics, all the power to them and especially, to those who take their money! Whackos are certainly one of the most lucrative market segments and the backbone of entire thriving industries – just think of the New Age movement and its various gurus and quacks or, with all due respect, look at the millions raked in by the global Whale watch industry!

But the Shark diving operators?
There’s really no two ways about this: by whatever metrics one applies, Ritter is just a bad, bad guy and any serious and self respecting operator needs to turn down his business, period!
Or is it once again all about the money, as in pecunia non olet?

But back to Doktor Ritter and his track record.
He has pretty much singlehandedly destroyed a thriving Shark ecotourism operation and conservation project on Walker’s Cay when he decided to take the money and allow Discovery to air the infamous footage of the Shark attack (no that was not an incident!) that cost him his calf. He has also conned several Shark NGOs, namely at least the Shark Foundation and Shark Project (and I suspect, at present, the SRI) of substantial amounts of research money without ever engaging in proper research, let alone publishing a single paper in exchange.
But then, one could argue that the past is the past and that it’s none of our business anyway, and I partly agree.

As for his scientific credentials, or lack of, what can I say.
It just so happens that I’ve studied Biology at the same University of Zurich as he and thus know that Ritter is a Wildbiologe, a very alpine and equally arcane discipline investigating the life history of Mountain Goats and the like. Having then self promoted himself to Shark researcher, he has published a couple of utterly irrelevant papers that few have read and nobody ever remembers, let alone cites.
Apart from that, the bulk of his productions consists in several idiotic little publications intended to educate, or whatever, the public at large that have been authoritatively reviewed as follows, and I cite

The lack of references also detracts from the ability to assess some of the claims and leaves one with the impression that most of the book is pseudoscience.

Finally, the volume is prone to hyperbole. For example, calling overfishing of sharks the largest ecological time bomb of all is absurd given our understanding of global climate change.

Although this book should be of interest to a general audience and is well intentioned, it does not add to our understanding of shark biology, their natural behavior, or their role in marine communities.

Ritter’s absurd non science quickly catapulted him to notoriety, and then to pariah status among his peers, at which he obviously decided to engage into what the Germans call Flucht nach vorne and to start thinking outside of the box – which quickly landed him way out there in left field and consequently, in the maws of a hungry Bull Shark.

Other would call it the ramblings of a lunatic - I call what he teaches Sharkitarianism.
Very much like New Age, it’s a mixture of truisms, pseudoscience, Rousseau-inspired romanticism and pseudo-visionary platitudes (check out the atrocious video!) that purports to breach the confines of petty conventionalism by creating a web of half truths and inane intuitive and always untested hypotheses, abusing scientific insights and language and accusing the perceived other side of being small minded, biased and intolerant - and in case I’m being too intellectually lofty here: it’s total bullshit, baloney, rubbish!
Case in point, the ramblings in the video I’ve posted here - pure snake oil!

The modus operandi is this – and lemme tell you, like all successful charlatans, the guy is crafty!
Having correctly, and cunningly diagnosed the Angstzination (a clever combination of the German world for fear and that for fascination coined by his then mentor and now victim Wegner of Sharkproject) for Sharks of the public at large, he has proclaimed himself to be the world’s foremost expert in Shark-human interaction.
The latter is a conveniently self-invented fusion of amateur psychology and untested, and obviously untestable insights from the Global (and once again, utterly irrelevant) Shark Attack File where he equally conveniently happens to be the resident Shark Behaviorist. And let’s not forget his stints as self-proclaimed Shark attack pathologist and his sanctimonious creation of SAVN, now apparently suspended!
Add to it the serendipitous occurrence, and above all, the survival of a veritable Shark attack and you have all the trappings for the start of a lucrative career as the world’s premier Shark Attack Guru - oh and for the German speakers: as Shark Shaman, too!
Wow - talk about having gone off the deep end!

But back to the topic at hand: this is precisely the insidiousness of Ritter’s proposition.
It’s exactly like Discovery’s recent roll-out. Forget the attempt at greenwashing by proffering Shark conservation sound bites - this is exclusively about making money by exploiting the fear of Shark attacks, pure Shark Porn!
By preaching to his disciples that they will only be able to safely interact with Sharks once they’ve given him their money, attended his seminars and learned his visionary techniques, he directly propagates the image of the ever lurking, man hunting monster.
Can you see that too - or is it once again just me who is blinded by conventionalism and incapable of thinking outside of the aforementioned box? Looks like I'm not alone!

As to the Fiji trip, now we know.
Nothing to add to what I said here – and no, it comes at no surprise!