Blog about "The World's best Shark Dive" by Beqa Adventure Divers.
Featuring up to eight regular species of Sharks and over 400 different species of fish, Shark diving doesn't get any better!
For now, it's merely a large sand bank that has been growing steadily for the past six months and been colonized by dozens of black and white Terns - but now that we've adorned it with its own niu, we fully expect it to develop into something more substantive.
First and foremost, bless Darcy and Yanniset al, very well done!
But I must also say that for me, this was a given anyway.
I've been a traveling diver for more than 40 years, and some of my friends for decades longer than that; and having once again asked some of those friends, and with the obvious exception of the known aggregation spots: none of us remembers anything even remotely resembling Sala's hypothesized Shark Eden - and lemme tell 'ya, we all have been to some locations that back then were mighty remote and mighty pristine and certainly not overfished!
Don't get me wrong here.
Back then, those reefs were teeming with life, with amazing coral, heaps upon heaps of fishes including numerous large predators among which Sharks, see e.g. here, meaning that the postulated biodiversity loss and the shifting baselines are more than real and cause for great concern - but again, even those absolutely magic spots were nothing like what Sala et al would have us believe!
Long story short?
Prima vista, not to worry.
Re-examining and possibly, falsifying previous scientific findings is quite normal and in fact, dissent is often how science and our knowledge progress.
It is just spurious garbage - and like I never cease to repeat, it is bad conservation as the truth will eventually emerge, incidentally often at great expense of resources that could have otherwise been invested in better undertakings. Plus, the reality is already so dire that there's absolutely no need for all that hyperbole!
Can we please stop with this shit and tell it as it is?
Which brings me straight over to this op ed - read it!
I can certainly see where Shelley is coming from.
Near Threatened (by the conservation-friendly IUCN no less!) equals NOT Threatened, and from a formal standpoint, this outcome was most certainly based on breathy marketing and not fact, and as such the wrong decision - and we can only hope that it doesn't eventually end up biting us all in the arse!
Again, we really need to stop those shenanigans!
But having said that,
I must confess that given my advocacy for a change of paradigms (and here), I applaud any Appendix II listing because of the mandated NDFs; and I certainly fervently believe the precautionary principle to very much be one of the tools of public policy = e.g. specifically when declaring Shark sanctuaries as stop gap measures pending the implementation of proper Shark fisheries management, especially in lesser developed countries!
Turns out that the dude in those old pics by Ghislain was not who I thought (= Morne who has hopefully stopped offering those illegal expeditions?) but some self important kraut who could obviously not resist the temptation to parade himself in the media.
Nah, don't worry, I'm not gonna unleash again - but I must really say that I'm greatly disappointed by Strege and GrindTV for failing to conduct even the most basic due diligence, the more as all they needed to do, is ask their own Pete Thomas who really knows what he's talking about.
Anyway, looking forward to the backlash.
The Guadalupe black list is a fact, and the authorities have vowed that the next season will be different.
To some, the solution is to simply stop taking them from our oceans, or prohibit carriage, sale or trade in shark fins.
Approaches such as bans and alternative livelihoods for fishers (e.g.
ecotourism) may play some role in controlling fishing mortality but will
not solve this crisis because sharks are mostly taken as incidental
catch and play an important role in food security. Here, we show that moving to sustainable fishing is a feasible solution.
Well - yes and no!
A big YES to sustainable fisheries and certified sustainable fins!
And of course sustainable fishing for some, comparatively few species is possible, and of course establishing well managed fisheries for those species is very much a feasible goal, and of course, the developed countries should assist the developing ones, and of course full traceability would be great!
But only in the long term - right?
Because short term, it just simply aint gonna happen anywhere besides the USA, Australia, maybe NZ and Canada and hopefully once Europe.
And like I said a squillion times, we simply do not have that time and need fast, stop-gap solutions like fishing moratoria, Shark sanctuaries and even better, those mega MPAs that protect the Sharks, their prey and their habitat - and yes the latter largely work!
Later on, once good management has indeed been established, some countries may decide to relax the prohibition - but right now, it's by far the most practicable solution.
Commercial fishermen fish what the traders tell them to fish = it is the traders that drive the fishery and I would argue, it is they who also drive most of the IUU. Methinks we need to much more concentrate on the trade, especially domestically, the more as the traders are far fewer and much more visible (and thus much easier to monitor), and that by the nature of what they do they also dispose of a wealth of data about the fishery.
Think about it.
Anyway, nice paper.
Certainly useful and truthful - but with caveats!
And, do click on, and read the links! :)
