Lunoblog

November 1st 2008 brought Swiss Oceanographer/Engineer Jacques Piccard to an eternal depth. At 86 years old Jacques, was one of the two people to achieve in 1960, a successful descent to 35,797 ft aboard his bathyscaphe funded by the US navy, submarine. Lt. Don Walsh and himself landed after a 5 hours descent on  the deepest point of the world’s oceans, the Challenger Deep,in  the Mariana Trench  located in the North Pacific Ocean. Jacques left  behind an inestimable legacy to future generations of oceanographers and engineers.  

 

 

 

Although stated in this title, I am not to enumerate the 10 reasons as I believe your imagination is fertile enough to come up with answers. But as I now have your attention, I shall share a few thoughts with you on how we, lunosapiens feel about the great white shark. Note that I put shark after great white, as “Great White” is a hollywood term that somewhat helped in bringing this animal to the endangered specie list appendix II. Peter Benchley if you only knew what kind of impact you were to create when you wrote Jaws…

Both Ted and I have had the chance to see these absolutely beautiful animals in the wild while diving. Ted was in Australia, I was in Mexico. Although we have a different appreciation of the experience, we come to the same conclusion, these apex predators are absolutely perfect, just watching them evolve underwater is a radical  course on hydrodynamics. I always thought perfection did not exist until I saw that girthy 17 feet long great white shark female swimming effortlessly around  my low tech cage. A monkey underwater? is probably what she was thinking as I was fighting my mind not to sing the two most effective music notes ever played in a movie score.  For a second I felt like she was observing me, she was at the zoo I was in the cage. She came closer and closer to the cage where I finally had the courage to touch her underbelly as she made a close “flyby”.  She disappeared by a few quick graceful tail movement in the blue water, exactly the way she had appeared, in full stealth mode.

Sharks are wild animals and can be extremely dangerous if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but they are far from being this monstrous aggressive animal portrayed in over-shown-blood-bath-feeding-frenzy footage on sensational tv shows. 100 millions sharks killed a year by humans versus maybe 10 lethal shark attacks on humans annually. Who do you think of the two should fear the other?

For shark preservation and ocean conservation check out :

ORCA (Ocean Research & Conservation)

Oceana Save The Shark

Sharks Protection & Preservation

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