Ban This.

We have been staying out of this Hawaiian Shark tourism argument, instead leaving this issue to our more qualified friends at Underwater Thrills. But this story seems to be everywhere now and won't go away, so we must weigh in on it. There is a movement in Hawaii that is slowly building support to ban Shark tourism in the state. This means divers may no longer be able go out with qualified guides, safely behind cages, and witness Sharks in their natural habitats. George Burgess of the International Shark Attack File and others, have posited that if organized human encounters with Sharks become more and more common, Sharks may soon begin to associate humans with food, leading to more incidences of Shark jams. I guess this makes sense on some sort of unscientifically proven level. Still, there is a type of sanctioned human/Shark interaction that is completely legal and even celebrated--Shark fishing. Organized Shark fishing charters chum and bait the hell out of waters to draw in Sharks only to kill the Sharks for trophy jaws and death photographs. How is ecotourism involving Sharks going to make Sharks associate people with food and Shark fishing not make Sharks associate people with food? Both activities involve bait and the feeding of Sharks, right? But no one ever attacks Shark fishing on these grounds.

Should Shark tourism go unregulated? Of course not. It probably shouldn't be okay for a seafood restaurant to have a cage in the water next to their dining marina so that paying customers can feed Tiger Sharks right off a surfing beach. But why can't the same paying customers do this offshore if the proper safety measures are taken? And if one or two people get jammed in the process...honestly, what is the big deal? Where is the outcry when people die skiing or snowboarding which claim scores of more human lives each year than Sharks?

Don't Ban This.

Sharks. Ooga Booga. Scary.

--Sharky