Saturday, December 04, 2010

Do not blame the Sharks!!

Have a hard look at this pic!

Some people have been severely injured - and looking at the video, who's surprised!
When stupid operators allow stupid people to do stupid things with Sharks, it's only a matter of time til something will go horribly wrong!
THIS is why I rant!



David's take on the ensuing hysteria here (yes, you are going out on a very thin limb indeed!) and some common sense by Richard here - and the flip side is here!
As to the inevitable conspiracy theorists (WTF?): read this and this and please, just stop it - it is really not helpful.

Hat tip: Mary - thanks!

4 comments:

DaShark said...

Wolfgang! Why don't you tell us how you really feel! :)

Seriously, customers are just customers and I would presume that it is kind of hard learning to deal with (aquatic) Sharks in Russia!

No the responsibility lays squarely with the operator for obviously not having educated them and for having allowed them to enter the water completely unprepared, unsupervised and unprotected.

Wolfgang Leander said...

I fully agree with you - it's the operators who are to be blamed - Egyptians, I presume, although there are reckless shark dive operators everywhere, as we very well know. And, yes, I wouldn't want to have a (wild) bunch of inexperienced and undisciplined Russian dive tourists to have to deal with...

Mark Harding said...

Wolf, don't think that the people who put these guys in the water are shark operators, they are far from it. I had the fortune (and misfortune) to have worked in Sharm for a year back in '06 and there are/were about 400 boats in the main marina, all for tourism, and it is nothing to go out to any of the main reefs and see 10 or 15 boats at any one time of day with twenty or so people per boat, all randomly plunging around, mostly harassing anything that moves, breaking coral, and generally making a mess. To make a sweeping generalisation, (sorry for the conscientious minority there, but it has to be said), the dollar bill rules and you can get up to pretty much anything without any control having been implemented. This accident has been waiting to happen for a long time, and now it has, retrospective controls implemented will probably only impact the guys trying to do the better work in the area, and at least two sharks have been killed. If there is ever to be a shark operator "seal of approval" developed as has been mooted in the wider community, such an event could have a positive effect in such situations, and effectively draw some galvanisation from the introspective, conscience driven operators in places such as Sharm, and begin to build some positive changes. This could bring benefit not just where operators should know better, but also in instances like this where the wider conglomeration of interests have absolutely no idea at all.

scuba said...

excellent picture