PBS Show on 10/18

[Scott from LongIsland]

So I was watching this PBS special last night about an Atoll off of Brazil. When watching the videographer, he kept grabbing live coral to hold still. This bothers me immensely and I have seen it multiple times on different programs. Has anyone else noticed this? Any ideas who to write to at PBS?

 

[Garrobo]

Yeah. I'm sure that PBS will get on the guy's case. Not.

 

[Scott from LongIsland]

I am not asking them to get on the guy's case *edited by almitywife*, but I will give the programming person my 2 cents. You would be surprised at the response you could get from contacting a television station.

 

[emcbride81]

This kind of stuff is always happening...I got a marketing DVD from Ft Lauderdale, and it has a clip of a woman using a SPV and crashing into corral and walls.

 

[MantaRey]

Professional filmmakers do this all the time. I used to do it when I worked. Although I tried to be as careful as possible. Like grab a barrel sponge or less sensitive things whenever possible. It needs to be done in order to hold the camera steady.

If you think that's bad consider the guys who shoot imax. Have you seen those housings? Even howard hall will set up a tripod plus a lot of ballast.

It boils down to weighing your options. If done on educating the public it might be necessary. It's like trying to tell monterey bay aquarium that taking wild animals and putting them in aquariums is wrong. Which it definitely is hard on something like a great white. But if that's what it takes to educate hundreds of little kids on the importance of our oceans; maybe it's not all that bad.

Also keep in mind how resilient the reefs are. Just consider what happens to them during hurricanes and bad storms and how quickly they can recover.

I am by no means promoting carelessness on our reefs. Just saying that it happens more than you think. For the rest of us it's still always best to be careful.

 

[8thElementDiver]

Scott, I applaud your concern about damaging the environment. Do a web search on PBS and find some emails. My advice is to not contact anyone individually--send your email to a few at the same time; that way they see that others also know about the email and so it's harder for them to ignore. If you're patient with them, you'll get to the right person.

As others mentioned, not much might happen. But if you do nothing, it's certain that nothing will happen. So it doesn't hurt to try.

A final piece of advice: there are a lot of flamers on this board. Ignore them. They feed off the attention they get from reactions to their asinine comments.

Let us know if you're successful with you efforts.