This story happened several months ago and while I just saw it today I think it’s not that incident we’re taking issues with but the ethics and principle of doing something like that instead. I try to stay out of issues that revolve around morals because they usually follow with a host of other consequences like emotions and personal biases and just like trying to argue politics, abortion, or, capital punishment, our strong innate beliefs inevitably get in the way and can cloud our impartiality.
I like Deeperblue and I feel the people here are fair, diverse and open minded and since it seems like most everyone respects the others opinions maybe this isn’t as perilous as it could be on another forum. It’s February and if you’re like me and you make a living selling spearfishing equipment there’s plenty of time to spend it philosophizing…
Sven I think you make good points and I don’t know which is the lesser of two evils here, a crazed lunatic jumping in with a belt full of power-heads and a spear after the great white caught in a tuna pen in the picture or a longliner finning oceanic white tips and makos and throwing the live carcasses back overboard, or even worse a purse seiner that casually uses spotter planes to round up schools of tuna and surround the school with a huge net. My point is that they’re all disrespecting the hand that feeds them. This guys stunt ties into a ton of other issues altogether.
Tuna aquaculture is a healthy practice and it’s probably the way of the future as far as eating seafood is concerned. Shrimp, trout, tilapia, muscles, clams…soon tunas won’t be caught in “Dolphin Safe” purse seines anymore but raised in farms like cattle. I and a few other people on the East Coast have been lobbying for spearfisherman rights at NMFS meetings to permit us to legally part-take in the pursuit of a few of these fish. The problem is not us and how much we can take and effect the fishery that’s been impeding us so far, it’s that there’s not enough tunas on the East Coast to go around. While ICAT (intern. Commission of Atlantic tunas) lobbies for no reductions in take for the commercial fishing orgs from both sides of the Atlantic that support it, the NMFS (national marine fisheries serv) tries to maintain a balance for everyone, commercials and recreationals in the US, by issuing quotas, seasons and size limits. Well, I just read an article in a magazine today that BFT’s are at historically low levels and several scientists forecast the possibility of the species becoming extinct if measures by the NMFS and ICAT aren’t taken to change the trend. The problem is bigger than that even, as everyone knows BFT are a HMS species and the fish we save over here get slaughtered in the Med or off Europe a few months later when they cross the Atlantic seasonally. The good thing about Highly Migratory fish is that you can’t wipe them out that easily but then again when you put the pressure, collected specific pressure, fishing fleets from all over the world (recreational fisherman too) put on these fish then you can indeed wipe them out.
When the giant tunas are being wiped out, especially the big fat ones a behemoth like the great white caught in the pen was trying to eat to survive, then its only option is to try to find food where it can. It’s basically not a buffet anymore where you stand in line waiting for your turn, as it probably was at one point in the great whites evolution for thousands of years, its slim pickings and you must even resort to robbery. We have to keep in mind here who is causing who to rob and resort to breaking and entering. Sharks as we all know just look for an easy meal.
What some humans forget sometimes is that for sharks this is the only way to survive and even though this is their environment we’re trespassing in to begin with, we’re the ones displacing them and killing them for trespassing.
If this shark had caused a scene like jaws and tried to jump in the boat and eat involved parties it would be one thing, but blowing an amazing specimen like that away for doing what comes natural to it when it wasn’t in self defense is a cowardly act. Some might say it was a brave act to jump into the pen with a pissed off great white in such a confined space for the benefit of the tuna harvest, but we might as well call bank robbers brave people too since what they do is also dangerous and they’re giving the money back to those who need it (self profit like tuna farming).
My point is this friends, it is not our duty or God given right to go into the ocean and kill fish. “You’re no longer protecting people by killing sharks and saving people against the dangerous sea creatures” as I heard Terry Maas tell someone once after he showed Terry pictures of a carnage of fish he’d shot. While we are at it, fishing, shooting, netting, they’re also playing a game called survival. I think it’s simply a privilege to be able to go into the ocean have fun and kill a fish to eat afforded to us by the richness and beauty of the sea and it is our duty to respect her in return. We should never take it for granted.
Well, thanks for listening anyway…
ps Sven- I also pondered the analogy you gave of the role reversal scenario with the sharks for a little while. If sharks were walking on land and killing people that we're in the way my answer is yes :hmm
