Should Shark Week Focus on Conservation?

[imwright1985]

To get the true picture about sharks one needs to look at baselines of at least 30-50 years. When I started diving soCal in the late 60s, blue sharks were everywhere. We saw them on the boat crossings to the mainland, on the dive boat going to the next dive site and even on shore dives at certain locations. Today it is so rare to see one that most "shark dives" operating from the mainland and those here on the island have stopped running due to the diminished possibility of even seeing a few. To show this, it would be good to gather footage from that era (both topside and underwater) and compare it with footage from the same locations today.

Fortunately some sharks appear to be making a comeback... the soupfin, the great white and the angel shark are examples in our waters.

the only thing i could think of to help paint a positive highlight of sharks and why conservation is a good thing is financialy and medical. Sharks are amazing to see and the only things people would probably connect with are medical (shark cartilage is used as a suppliment and is in trials for treatment of possible cancerous tumors) and financial if you show how shark dive ops have been cut back and that different regions have different sharks for their ecosystem then you might be on track for educational and entertaining.

[smellzlikefish]

That's an interesting point. Blue Water White Death had some great footage of piles of blue sharks in numbers that I don't think has been duplicated since. I guess the same could be said of oceanic white tips. Maybe repeat the scenes around dead whales and show how the species composition has changed.

You'll still have a few stubborn old farts asking why should they care, and to answer that, if you can think of a clear example where the depletion of sharks has adversely affected the way people interact with the environment; to most people this means fishing. Perhaps some video demonstrating the decline in the east coast scallop fishery that has been tied to collapsing shark populations. You could then broaden the picture to include the intricacies of messing with and studying food webs.