Shark Diver and CNN Preview

Check out tonight's CNN Presents with Kaj Larsen and the crew of Shark Diver who were tapped to provide the background for this terrific pro-shark, pro-industry media expose.

Luke Tipple, the Director of the Shark-Free Marinas guides Kaj through the world of sharks, shark conservation, and shark fishing tournaments explaining the Shark-Free Marinas concept and its success along the way:

CNN and Shark Diver Airs Sunday Oct 30th

Got the following email this week from the fine folks over at CNN.

This fall we were asked to help with a pro-shark conservation piece covering shark fishing and Shark-Free Marinas.

Over the past year we have done four such programs with various media outlets from the US to Brazil in hopes that positive media for sharks helps folks understand the many complex issues sharks are facing.

With our always ready A-List shark crew we headed out to the Bahamas to highlight a place that is doing shark conservation right and shot reef sharks over two days with their show host.

Luke Tipple was gracious enough to carve out some of his busy conservation and filming schedule to guide CNN around sharks and the Shark-Free Marinas. For the past two years Luke has been the Director of the SFMI and the heart and soul of the program. You not going to find a better media spokesman for sharks, delivering sound bytes and hard facts without the hype.

Thanks to Scotty from Blue Iguana, MoonDog, Capt Rob and the rest of the crew for making this important show work under tough local conditions and chum that was peeling the paint off passing cars.

Thanks as well to Old Bahama Bay Resort for once again providing top notch hotel accommodations to wayward film crews from the mainland.

The story airs Sunday, check it out if you get a chance because this is about as good as it gets for mainstream shark conservation footage and analysis.

Also check out Richard Theiss from RTSea Productions who shot footage for the plastics segment.

Hi Pat, 

Hope you're well. 

Our shark story premieres this Sunday at 5; 8pm PST. I'm very happy with the story...only wish I had more than 6 minutes to work with!

All is good here. Rich and I just returned from Belize. We went back to dive the reef off Placencia...large scale development going on and it is starting to trash the reef. 

Best, 
Heather 
CNN

CNN Tackles Shark Use - Kudos

Today CNN tackled the harsh realities of traditional medicine use around the globe. It's an interesting take on sharks fin and cartilage use that often gets sidelined when talking sharks.

80% of Africa and Asia still uses traditional medicine as a first line cure for regional illness. While the earths population is hovering around 6,768,167,712 that's a massive demand for all raw use animal products, not just sharks:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Alternative treatments are as varied as the regions of the world they come from. And while they attract skepticism from some Western medical practitioners, they are an undeniable part of global health.

In parts of Asia and Africa, 80 percent of the population depend on these treatments as their primary form of healthcare.

Shark fin has long been used in traditional Asian medicine. Shark fin soup is regarded as a tonic that promotes general well-being, and shark fin has even been claimed to have anti-cancer properties. Shark fins are mainly composed of cartilage, a type of connective tissue found in the skeletal systems of many animals.

In Japan, they are sold by herbalists as a powder, in tablet form or as whole fins. While shark fin has been used for centuries in Asia, in recent years it has become more popular in the West.

A book called "Sharks Don't Get Cancer," published in 1992, popularized the idea of shark fin as an alternative cancer treatment in the West, and powdered shark fin is now sold as dietary supplement.

Full Story

CNN Good-MSNBC-Bad

Got an email from Jeremiah over at Neptunic SharkSuits yesterday about the following video. For those of you who do not know Jeremiah he's an "industry gray beard" a guy who's been around the block and few million times and whose time in water with sharks commands respect.

MSNBC's coverage of a dead Great Hammerhead caught in Florida this week could have been taken from any script written in 1977 for a local anchor. Missing is the "sympathy for the devil" and any basic understanding about shark conservation. Now take CNN's coverage of sharks this month and you get the feeling that perhaps MSNBC is pulling anchor scripts from 1977:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Anderson Cooper's Stunt Journalism

From the Washington Times this morning a "news industry" look at Anderson Cooper's Planet In Peril. For the record we're going to depart from our CV and jump to Anderson's defense, that entire series was great conservation television:

Anderson Cooper is a fine journalist, which is all the more reason for CNN to stop trying to feed him to sharks.

Last night CNN ran its program "Planet in Peril: Battle Lines," which careened from continent to continent, crisis to crisis, anxiety to anxiety, in what can only be called porn for paranoiacs. Some of it was very well done, but the overall product, I fear, felt like stunt journalism, ranging from Lisa Ling braving the Nigerian backwaters to meet with gun-blazing militants to, most prominently, Cooper swimming with great white sharks.

First he swam inside a shark cage. Then -- Cooper in peril!!! -- he swam without the cage, among those mindless monsters, clinging to a rock at the sea bottom while they circled hungrily. You could almost hear Sean Hannity in the distance screaming "EAT HIM! EAT HIM!"

I found myself impressed more than anything by the CNN expense account. Cooper, Sanjay Gupta and Lisa Ling were zooming all over the planet, to remote deserts, an island in the Pacific, deepest jungle, the Andes, and so on, and documenting all manner of horrors and injustices. But it felt scatterbrained, showy and entirely driven by the visuals. Yes, it's neat to look at great white sharks up close, and to wonder if they'll devour the anchorman (to a cry of "Anchor away!!!), but what does that have to do with anything?

Here's the CNN Planet in Peril website.

And here's an exhaustive summary of all the amazing things that Cooper & Co. did to document the planet in peril.

CNN-Wild Aid-Conservation Home Run

After months of bad news about sharks, along comes this mornings in-depth and quite frankly astonishing coverage of Taiwans sharks fin trade by CNN's-Lisa Ling and Peter Knights of WildAid

The "Planet in Peril" crew traveled with Knights to Taiwan's southern port city of Kaohsiung, which is considered one of the world's main hubs for shark fins. We watched as the fishermen unloaded their catch. Thousands of fins were thrown from one of the ships that had spent months fishing the international waters of the Pacific.

Real and lasting conservation media starts with credible sources and ends with in depth reporting like this. Kudo's to the entire team who put this together, from the video crew to the line producers, this is first rate NGO work and first rate television/media.