The Dorsal Fin

To counterbalance the stupid whale shark video posted earlier, I thought I’d re-visit one of WildAid‘s excellent shark conservation public service announcements. The video features 7-time Olympic medalist (2-time gold medalist) Amanda Beard and addresses the impact of finning and over-fishing on the world’s shark populations. While the video has been around for over a year, I figured it was worth re-visiting to hopefully give it some more exposure (it only has about 3,500 views on YouTube versus the 137,000 views of the guy riding the whale shark, as I write this). I think the people who put this one together did an awesome job.

Rockford Illinois’ WREX Channel 13 ran an interview with Shark Diver Magazine’s Thomas Sergent yesterday. Sergent attempted to dispel the fear campaign that Discovery Channel has been serving up with this year’s Shark Week. (WARNING: The video does feature a few brief scenes of finning and a couple of shots of dead white sharks)

Sergent’s message was conservation-oriented and focused on how sharks have more to fear from humans, than we have to fear from them, based on the number of sharks killed annually by humans. However, that didn’t stop reporter, Bob Schaper, from interjecting an utterly ignorant statement into his interview with Sergent, which basically undermined the very message Sergent was trying to convey…

“Let’s face it. There are some sharks that like to gnaw on you, and, you know, just like drag you down and eat you, and chomp on you.”

There really isn’t any excuse for statements like this in what is supposed to be an objective news report. Not only does the statement reflect a sense of bad reporting, it is counterproductive to the intended message that Sergent was trying to communicate. The sheer lack of common sense of the statement makes me wonder if Schaper was playing “devil’s advocate” and began the statement with something to the effect of, “What do you say to people who think…” and that part was edited out. That scenario would at least make some sense.

In a press release from The Humane Society of the United States, it is being reported that renowned chef and author, Alice Waters, has signed The International Humane Society’s No Shark Fin Pledge, which reads…

I pledge to help protect the world’s oceans by committing never to consume or serve shark fin or any product containing shark fin.

(continue reading…)

The video above is one of the shark conservation Public Service Announcements (PSA) that will be run during Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. If you’ve witnessed any of Discovery Channel’s promotional media for Shark Week, you’ll notice a stark contrast between the above message and the fear-based ad campaign. The PSA showed up today on The Ocean Conservancy’s YouTube Channel and is listed as being presented by The Discovery Channel and The Ocean Conservancy. While I fully support The Ocean Conservancy’s efforts, I find it hard to buy into Discovery’s commitment to shark conservancy, when they continue to exploit and misrepresent sharks for their own personal gains.

In light of Discovery Channel’s recent fear-based ad campaign, I thought I’d revisit Save Our Seas Foundation‘s “Rethink The Shark” ad campaign from 2007. The award-winning ads (based on a well-known scene from Jaws, no less) are proof-positive that an audience-gripping ad campaign can be created, while still maintaining a conservationist-minded theme. The ads were created by advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi Capetown. Three ads were created, all of them with the same lead-in as the ad posted above. The other two ads ended with a kite and a toaster.

I love how the ads take the fear and familiarity of Jaws and turn it around to increase awareness about just how rare fatal shark attacks are.