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  • Swimming With Sharks

    Swimming With Sharks, and Paying for It

    LOS ANGELES — One hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, lies Shark Central.

    Isla Guadalupe has 22 miles of blue island waters swarming with great white sharks — and tourist boats.

    "It's pretty much the only place in the world where you can take a trip and pretty much know that you're going to see sharks," says Martin Graf, president of Graf Diving in San Diego.

    To get an up-close look, adventure-seeking passengers are lowered into the crystal-clear waters in shark cages. The crew spreads bloody hunks of bait all around, and then you wait.

    "You have certain things in life that are on your list of things to do," says eco-tourist Ted Haines, "and being in a cage and watching a great white shark feed was definitely one of them for me."

    Customers pay thousands of dollars for the great white thrill ride, but some marine researchers worry there may be serious consequences.

    "It is one of the most basic tenets of wildlife care that you do not feed wild animals, because it alters their behavior," explains Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif.

    "They begin to lose their natural reticence, indifference, maybe even aversion, to humans and begin to associate them with food, perhaps."

    The charter companies say they aren't feeding the sharks, exactly — just luring them to the boats with tuna and sardines.

    "Unless they're actually fed, they're not positively re-enforced to come to that cage," saysPeter Klimley, a marine biologist at the University of California, Davis. "In fact, they're, in a sense, what humans may call frustrated."

    So the argument is they're only making the sharks mad, not training them to eat human flesh.

    "To actually train a shark to, let's say, to associate a boat with feeding, that shark has to appear over and over again, and you have to feed it over and over again," Klimley says. "This generally does not occur."

    Research is being conducted to see whether shark tourism is having an effect on the creatures. At least one tour operator says that if it is, he's finished.

    "Through this research, we'll be able to determine whether we are having an impact, and if we are, then I know I, for one, will pull out of great white shark diving at Guadalupe Island," vows Greg Grivetto, captain of the Ocean Odyssey, one of the boats run by Horizon Charters in San Diego.

    The question is: With a profitable new source of tourism dollars at stake, will anyone else?

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175548,00.html
    Has anyone ever gotten to do that - Get into a shark cage and see these close up? I would LOVE to get to do that before my time is up.

    When I was in Costa Rica we had taken a boat out to an island and the boat could not get close enough to shore so we either had to swim or take smaller boats. I chose to swim and that was awesome. The dolphins would come right up to you and hit you with their nose while you were swimming. They were kinda funny about letting us reach out and touch them, though. There were smaller sharks that came around, but I am talking like 3, maybe 3 and a half feet, so nothing that cannot be seen in a local aquarium and probably bought in a pet store.

    But I would absolutely go crazy over getting to have a great white or a hammerhead right outside a cage from me.
    "To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

    "I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

    "I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

    "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

  • #2
    Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
    I would LOVE to get to do that before my time is up.
    You do that ma'am, and your time may well be up .

    I saw a great white a few years ago while off the Karachi coast, one of the reasons I do not miss living there.
    "Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

    Comment


    • #3
      Death wishes -- mine is sky-diving. :)

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
        Has anyone ever gotten to do that - Get into a shark cage and see these close up? I would LOVE to get to do that before my time is up.
        I've done it without the cage....

        Lol, but I didn't get in the water....

        I posted a couple pics from my Guadelupe trip in this thread:

        http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/sho...6&postcount=14
        "We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by highsea
          I've done it without the cage....

          Lol, but I didn't get in the water....

          I posted a couple pics from my Guadelupe trip in this thread:
          That is awesome! I would love to be that close to one of those that are that big. It would have taken everything I had not to have tried to reach over to touch it. Too cool!
          "To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

          "I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

          "I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

          "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Julie
            Death wishes -- mine is sky-diving. :)
            My step dad went a few years back - My mom made him get life insurance first. :)

            I would like to try it, except that I HATE (bordering on actually being fearful) flying. I am not so sure I would be able to go through with it once I got up there.
            "To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

            "I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

            "I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

            "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
              I would like to try it, except that I HATE (bordering on actually being fearful) flying. I am not so sure I would be able to go through with it once I got up there.
              That is what is so odd -- I don't do planes and/or fly either. But the thought of plunging 2,000 ft. and living through it (hopefully) just makes me want to experience it for some reason. I know it sounds stupid, but if I had one last request, that's what I would want to do.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
                It would have taken everything I had not to have tried to reach over to touch it. Too cool!

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
                  It would have taken everything I had not to have tried to reach over to touch it. Too cool!
                  And you would no longer boasted the services of a hand.
                  "Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    There are enough of loan sharks around for one to worry about real sharks.

                    Real sharks are more peaceable!


                    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

                    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

                    HAKUNA MATATA

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                    • #11
                      Did it once by accident, have no plans to repeat. Nope.
                      In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                      Leibniz

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
                        My step dad went a few years back .
                        How did it go? Did he get it out of his system, or want to do it again? Just wondering.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Julie
                          How did it go? Did he get it out of his system, or want to do it again? Just wondering.
                          I think that if someone were to go again and ask him to come along he'd go again, but it is not something he is now striving to do since he has already done it.
                          "To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

                          "I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

                          "I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

                          "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by sparten
                            And you would no longer boasted the services of a hand.
                            I am not planning on hand-feeding the shark (no pun intended) - I would only want to pet him.
                            "To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."-Sholem Asch

                            "I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures."-Earl Warren

                            "I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."-Nancy Reagan, when asked a political question at a "Just Say No" rally

                            "He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules."-Earl Butz, on the Pope's attitude toward birth control

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by TopHatsLiberal
                              I would only want to pet him.
                              And that's what the shark would want to.

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