This is a tough one. According to the Dive South Africa blog, one of the key leaders of Australia's scuba diving industry is saying that a particular shark who attacked a marine biologist should be killed. Scuba diving industry association director David Oliver says that public safety would be served if authorities went after the shark who killed 23-year-old Jarrod Stehbens. But isn't this kind of ridiculous? I mean, not that shark attacks are horrible, but isn't this what sharks do? It's one thing if you kill some escaped tiger who mauls a child at a zoo, but the ocean is the shark's domain, we are the visitors there. It seems wasteful and somewhat ignorant to kill an animal who is merely doing what millions of years of evolution programmed it to do. Call me crazy, but I think the biologist should have been aware that sharks swam in the area. This is a bad precedent and wholly unnecessary. Am I wrong? Or do sharks, like grizzlies (allegedly), develop a taste for human meat and so this shark could be a particular menace?
1. It's totally ridiculous. It's also bizarre that the scuba diving industry association director, of all people, would be calling for this. Fortunately, Stehbens' parents have asked that the shark be spared (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050825/sc_nm/australia_shark_dc), as if there were any chance of finding that particular shark, anyway.
Evidently, many dive shops in the area require their divers to use a shark shield (http://www.divester.com/2005/06/10/shark-shields-electrical-shark-repellents/) when diving. However, that morning, Stehbens wasn't wearing one, and he was collecting cuttlefish eggs. I'm GUESSING the shark didn't really want to attack Stehbens but was worked up from the smell of the eggs.
What do others think?
Posted at 3:05PM on Aug 31st 2005 by Willy Volk