Thursday, April 12, 2012

Hell, No!


276 shares???
This is total bullshit!
It's not even remotely plausible (99% decline in Bull Sharks? I mean, seriously...), as quickly realized by the authors (?) themselves, and I cite.

Dive Tribe -Thailand Hmmm yes it would be nice to have sources where the information was obtained from & would any one like to give Amanda a quick insight into why sharks are important.
Thanks for all your comments - Team at DT.

Dive Tribe -Thailand Have to agree it's not that accurate ..If you need real hard data please try the IUCN Red List or Pew for better facts & figures. Still if it made new people aware of the danger sharks are in then it did its job !

Really?
Posting The Shocking Truth that gets re-posted by the usual echo chambers, only to then admit that you don't know where those numbers came from and that they are probably faulty only achieves one aim, to discredit you and everybody else who then goes and propagates this nonsense - but then again, when the great Guru of Sharkwaterism himself is quoted as saying that “The shark populations have gone down by 90 per cent. Nine out of every 10 sharks in the world have been killed,”, common mortals may be forgiven. The good news being that many in the comments thread are skeptical, meaning that there is definitely progress!
Guys, if you want to be taken seriously, be careful!

This
is the truth as we know it.
It's plenty bad enough - but there has never been a global census of those species, not in 1970 and not now, and the figures are quite obviously way off the mark. We will never really know - but every researcher I've ever talked to puts the global decline somewhere around the 50% mark (much more and much less depending on location) which would be absolutely staggering in its magnitude!

So let me quote myself - yes, again!

The facts and numbers?
Science is in continuous flux and the data do indeed change – but until they do, the latest peer reviewed science remains the best approximation of the truth.
Thankfully, there are now plenty of resources where anybody can consult the latest insights and data, meaning that those who continue to operate with inflated statistics and outlandish assertions lack any excuses and credibility whatsoever. The facts are plenty horrible as it is – so let’s please stick to those and refrain from the usual stupid inflated hyperbole!

Conservation is never happening in a vacuum - it is being used to advocate legislation that in its marine context will deprive fishermen of income and quite possibly, of their livelihoods. With that in mind, we owe it to them, but also, to ourselves not to cheat and to use misleading perceived "marketing", or whatever, but to be truthful and fact based instead.

The situation for many, if not most species of Shark is really, really dire and there's absolutely no need whatsoever to inflate numbers and to come up with ludicrous propositions like the moronic correlation to the ocean's production of oxygen.

And then there's this.
Assume we succeed in having laws enacted based on misleading data - what would prevent the legislators from repealing them once we got caught out?
Think we would ever get a second chance after such a fiasco?

Yes I know I know...

2 comments:

gansbaaai shark diving said...

The thing is - they will never really know the real truth - I have heard that they believe there to only be 5000 great white sharks left in the world...But how can they be sure of any of these numbers?

DaShark said...

You're right, nobody knows.

One number I saw a while ago was 3,500 but I remember it being controversial.
On the other hand, if you think in terms of the way food webs are depicted as pyramids, top predators are certainly comparatively rare and the order of magnitude appears plausible.

One thing is for certain.
Way too many sharks have and are still being killed, meaning that if we care, we must do whatever we can to preserve them.

But, and hence my post, let's remain fact based whenever possible - this kind of inflated hyperbole will always come back and bite us and make our cause weaker as a consequence.