A call to cull by The King himself!
By now you may have already seen the video, released last week and playing below, wherein Kelly Slater speaks of the horrible, terrible, awful crime that is ocean pollution. In fact Slater hates ocean pollution so much that he decided to sell a shirt with the words “It’s Not OK” (a clever play on his “eco-friendly” brand OuterKnown) emblazoned across the chest, with one-hundred percent of profits going to “support protecting and cleaning up the ocean”. A wonderful thing for the Champ to do.
Here’s that vid.
You may have also heard that another surfer (sponger) died on Reunion Island yesterday by way of shark. It is very sad for friends and family of the victim, Alexandre “Krapo” Naussance, but also for the Reunion community as a whole because their waters seem truly infested or maybe even cursed. These people are living in paradisiacal purgatory.
Jeremy Flores, a Reunion Island native, took to Instagram for the umpteenth time to commiserate his fallen compatriot. He left a wonderful portrait and heartfelt message for Krapo, seen below.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
On that very photo, Slater left an intriguing comment. He said:
Honestly, I won’t be popular for saying this but there needs to be a serious cull on Reunion and it should happen every day. There is a clear imbalance happening in the ocean there. If the whole world had these rates of attack nobody would use the ocean and literally millions of people would be dying like this. The French govt needs to figure this out asap. 20 attacks since 2011!?
Oh you just know that Derek Rielly and Fred Pawle are foaming at the mouths, reading, re-reading, and massaging their fully-engorged loins in a state of euphoria. The King, free-leader of the aquatic world, has used the words “serious cull”, “imbalance” and “literally millions of people dying” in reference to sharks! All of this after his very serious video about how we must protect ocean wildlife!
Now someone will make the case that by culling sharks you’re helping protect the over-eaten fish etc., but this is still a little funny, no? At least slightly hypocritical?
And, even if you do agree with the Reunion cull, what kind of precedent does that set? Will the next one be in Ballina, or maybe New Smyrna Beach, FL?
Please feel free to lay out your mutually beneficial (to humans and the ocean) plans below. I’m very truly ambivalent about this topic.
So you’re okay with killing in “moderation” for the sake of human recreation? What if there was a strategy to allow all captured animals to be set free to have fun in nature but “a few humans will die in the process, but not many”. Dafuq you think society’s reaction would be to that? If you’re gonna set up nets that will potentially kill “a few sharks” which I tell you will not be 3, you might as well advocate for a strategic cull. There’s no “midway” or gray area in this stance. You either kill or don’t kill as far as environmentalist and shark advocates go.
We deserve a SHARKS ARE OK T-SHIRT !! hey @kellyslater don’t forget also to call a cull for mosquitoes,hippos,deers,dogs,jellyfish,cows and more …so we all can be safe and the “balance restored” seriously think the big picture and read about sharks (importance,decreasing population and more) we as surfers always respect for the ocean and its inhabitants also we accept the risk involved once we enter in the ocean and we don’t hold anyone responsible for our actions. peace
,?
There must be some good recipes for shark fin soup in French cuisine.
Shark fin soup is a tradition of Chinese culture.
Hey that stuff is delish!
Then add a wine reduction and give it a colonial twist.
It’s the pesky vegetarians that are the real threat. Eating all the dear animals food and all. How dare they think they can rule with such an iron fist.
We should feed shark to the poor to cure world hunger. Yay!
I think Kelly’s words “if the whole world had this problem” implies something important. That is: in each place where sharks are proving dangerous to people right now, the situation is quite different, and so would be the solutions. Like, Réunion and Ballina are very different places with very different shark and human populations. You wanna learn from what has worked in similar circs, yet also look at the specific issues in a coastal area and act in accordance.
Screw the circle of life. I’ll keep my leg, thank you very much. If this was treated as a roach problem, which it is, when you strip away all the luvvie mumbo jumbo, it would be pretty easy to solve: get a bigger boat, kill em, eat em.
Shark scientists are chummers, and the longer they study the problem, the worse it seems to get.
Are you in serious danger of a shark attack while surfing? Like where you surf I mean.
I’m not. Most of the time I surf under the protection of Sydney’s meshing program. It’s been a lucky break for me I reckon and I’ve really thought about it a lot since the Ballina/Byron attack cluster began back in 2014. The effectiveness of the meshing program is undeniable and completely backed up by 80 years’ of data and several reviews and fine tunings. It doesn’t even take that bad a toll on big dangerous sharks or other marine populations, despite what green-inclined people say about it. For sure it has prevented many people from being killed in shark attacks off Sydney. But the coastal structure might help with the meshing working so well here – headlands and short beaches/bays which affect shark swimming patterns etc. The same might not be true of other places.
What meshing does show is that you don’t need to kill a fuck load of sharks in order to make a coast pretty safe. You just need to do stuff that separates large sharks from humans.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Reunion have not only giant nets, but also actual scuba divers whose only job is to watch for sharks and alert surfers of their presence?
Although I believe this is confined to certain breaks.
I’ve heard they been testing with artificial kelp beds which acts as a barrier
Agreed. But I live in south west oz and there isn’t a single netted surf beach in my entire region!! It’s discrimination. All legitimate surf spots (maybe not the novelty waves) that people (including little groms with their whole life ahead of them) surf on a regular basis should be protected from sharks. Either nets, drones, missile launchers. I don’t care how but we need to start protecting humans instead of sprouting bullshit like “its the sharks domain” or “you have more chance of dying from a coconut” haha. Not me – I’ve never even seen a fuckin coconut tree but I’ve seen a shitload of sharks!!
Genetically modified to be human friendly will work. Then kill old ones off. We’ll all feel good about ourselves.for saving the shark
this is correct
By all means, restore the balance, but you first brah.
Mullet, I owe you a beer.
Mike you seem truly ambivalent about everything you write about……anything in particular light your fuse?
All this play by play is amusing but getting kind of wearying.
Perhaps ambivalence wasn’t the correct word, as it almost implies a sense of indifference.
On the contrary, this is a subject I’ve thought long and hard about and have yet to form a definitive opinion. I’ve heard both sides and see merit in each of their arguments. I guess it just comes down to what @TomHouse:disqus said — that we don’t know enough from a scientific standpoint to prove if culling is going to destroy the food chain or cause some other type of unforeseen problem.
I do feel that human lives matter more than shark lives, but if killing sharks hurts the oceanic ecosystem, we could be killing more humans in the long run than we’d be saving in the short run with culling. Also I’ve noticed that most of the things humans tamper with go to shit.
So yeah, quite the quandary for little ol’ me.
Oh and I think I made pretty clear my stance on the Linden situation…
yeah, you wanted “conflicted”
Yep, pretty self-loathing on the Linden, and pretty obtuse on the shark situation.
I’ll alleviate your fears right now – we could kill every single Great White, Tiger and Bull shark (the main culprits in human deaths) in the world and the ocean ecosystems of the world would be just fine. The impact on ecosystems will be miniscule compared to the current impact humans fishing already has. These sharks are all very nomadic creatures and ecosystems at local beaches can survive perfectly fine for years on end without a predatory shark in site. Millions of species on land and ocean have gone extinct on this earth and the ecosystems have adapted and thrived time and time again. The ONLY reason anyone gives a shit about these vicious hunting machines with tiny brains, no emotions, no complex relationship structures (like dolphins, whales) is because WE HUMANS are too highly evolved for our own damn good. Too many of us have too much time to ponder the insignificant “what ifs” of killing some seemingly useless, dangerous animal instead of focusing on the most important issue which is the survival of OUR OWN SPECIES. It is fucking laughable and yet sickening how much some people care about sharks more than surfers – someone’s brother, father, son, husband. Every time a surfer dies every single environmentalist who believes in ridiculous values like “more research is needed” (hint – research doesn’t stop deaths!!) or “it’s the shark’s domain” has the blood of that dead surfer on their hands. I’m a staunch environmentalist who actually works for an environmental agency (seriously!) and almost got bought to tears watching Blackfish (because Orcas are actually worth protecting) but I know where to draw the line morally and philosophically. Amen to Kelly Slater for having the brains to have the same view. If only more environmentalists could open their closed minds!!!
Agree 1000%. There’s no such thing as an “exploratory bite” with a great white or tiger. The notion that the white was “not attacking” Mick but simply exploring is moronic. Mick looked like an easy meal. If big predators like whites and tigers are not looking to feast on humans, I’d like to see a bunch of shark lovers jump in the Farralon waters uncaged while a half eaten seal is being attacked by 2-3 whites? Or some Hawaii shark tour guys jump in the water while 10 tigers feast on a dead whale carcass 5 miles out to sea? By their theories that humans are NOT prey for large predatory sharks and attacks are merely mistaken identity, then the sharks should know the difference between a half seal or bloated whale and a human being right?
Wow! Sharks are threatening the survival of OUR OWN SPECIES? Good job there’s environmentalists like you out there, prepared to hunt a species to extinction to save, what, 5 lives a year?
I never said sharks are threatening our species. Obviously humans are fuckin very far from extinction or being endangered!! If you understand plain logic I was pointing out that the survival of “a human” any human is more important than the survival of a shark (singular not plural). And this is the way nature is intended to operate. Most living beings on the entire planet (except some fucked up animals like sharks that eat their own young) generally are hard wired to protect their own species (particularly family, friends etc). Just so you know my chance of getting eaten by a shark is higher than dying in a car crash!! Much higher. because of where surf, how regularly and the size of the surf population vs car drivers…. and just think of all the money spent on protecting drivers and roads! Like Kelly said if every beach had shark problems like Reunion governments would be taking massive steps to save surfers but cos its just a few no one cares. I’d love to see how important you think Great Whites are to this planet if your own child or wife got eaten by one?? I bet you couldn’t list 5 reasons why great whites are important! haha Whilst I’m sure you could list a MILLION reasons why your child, wife, mother etc are important….You are brainwashed mate. Open your mind!
…and there was me thinking you were hysterically conflating the tiny risk of death by shark with the continued survival of humankind to make a point. While calling yourself an environmentalist. With a bit of family ties emotional blackmail thrown in for good measure. Possibly because you were. Thanks for circling around and clearing that one up!
Shame Derek couldn’t get his wank room approved before this missive from the King …….it could have been a great way to “break the champagne”.
Um, a Yank who didn’t bother to vote against Trump shouldn’t really go around preaching to other countries about how to conduct their business, now should he?
You have a point. Never could figure out Rastavich’s appointment as “Bong’s”enviro hero. These companies need to switch gears and fund prospective icon’s of oceanography, biology, … Before they hoist a pro surfer up the pole. Maybe Kelly could move away from the tour become an ambassador for Healthy Oceans more of a Cousteau figure rather than another fading pro with opinion.
Fine with something like this, but not necessarily a straight up cull. Fine with ramping up shark fishing in the Lennox/Byron area, too.
Nobody has any fucking clue what the proper “balance” is, in an ocean population. Fishing regs in large part have contributed to an explosion of shark numbers on Reunion — was that not manipulating the natural balance? We’ve long since fucked most of the ocean. We don’t know anything about what it was like before we got here. To play like we do and to try and restore some mythical balance is absurd. Lots of sharks killing people? Do something about it. Increased shark fishing, drum lines, whatever.
I’ve got an idea what the proper balance is: when attacks aren’t common, but extremely rare.
Kill em, Kill em, Kill em, Surf, Surf, Surf!
Thank God for Slater’s advocacy on this topic. He’ll take a hit from the unhinged Greenies for it, and he had to know it before he said it. Respect.
we could at least try to keep it where it was when Darwin and that guy who rode along with Russel Crowe in Master and Commander were around. fuck, the way it was when Hemmingway was around would be great.
we have no idea how many sharks there are now. how would we know how many there were then?
DNA family structure testing. Do enough of it on a regional shark population and you get a pretty good idea of how many there are right now, and how many there probably once were. Same ways as it’s been used to backtrack human populations.
Yup. This method has also been also used to extrapolate historical whale population sizes in the North Atlantic, the results of which pointed towards a need to upwardly revise estimates of historical populations. For example, the current North Atlantic population of Humpbacks is circa 10,000 and thought by some to be reaching full recovery but the genetic variation in this group indicates a historical population as high as 240,000.
The 15th and 16th century European sailors’ accounts of the western Atlantic and Caribbean teeming with Whales, Turtles and Sharks were not really taken seriously as potential evidence sources for historical estimates until the above genetic analysis of whales. However, if current whale numbers are that far below their historical population baseline, then it arguably follows that other apex species including sharks have present-day populations which are just fractions of their historical levels. Hence the old sailor mateys may not have been tripping out in their accounts after all.. (Callum Roberts describes this well in “An Unnatural History of the Sea”)
However, with regards to Reunion and indeed north coast NSW… F*cked if i know if its as simple as populations rebounding to historical levels and shark doing as sharks do; the ecosystems within which these shark numbers are increasing are probably pretty altered in comparison to those which once existed,no?
interesting. i spoke at length with a shark expert about this very thing and he was quite clear that we know very little about historic shark populations.
Well yes, that is because there has been very little of this DNA testing stuff done on shark populations so far. The only stuff I know of has been done by CSIRO scientists in Australia. They have so far roughly deduced that the current white shark population in Australian waters numbers a bit less than 6,000, and that pre European settlement was more like 30,000. By comparison, similar (way more extensive) testing on humpback whales off eastern Australia suggests that prior to bans on whale hunting in 1962, we’d managed to kill them down to around 1,000 or so of an original population of about 90,000. They’ve since rebounded to about 20,000 and climbing. As Rhino says it’s probably not this simple, but you’ve got to consider the possibility that since their protection in 1996/7, the white shark population has begun a similar rebound. After all, dead and dying migrating whales are part of their clean up duties.
By the way Nick, would you mind telling your brother Tom to proof test that tailpad thingy he endorses (sells, sponsored by, whatever the correct term is) in Reunion’s waters for, say, a week or two?
I’m interested in buying and it could also be the best solution for Reunion but we can’t really know until someone who really believes in it has the courage to test it properly…
What I have not seen anyone bring up is the possibility that the increase in shark attacks is directly related to loss of ecosystem function on the reefs. Fish populations are declining in diversity and abundance, likely reducing food availability for the sharks. So the first step for the French Gov’t maybe should be reducing polluted silty runoff into the reefs.
https://en.ird.fr/the-media…
Yeah, that shark ain’t fukin with nobody thanks to the old man.
More research is needed. I have said it several times on here. Research perpetuates more research and is the perfect career for a surfer. Specifically shark research. Travel to exotic locations, dabble with some science crap, and surf. Write up a report based on vague similarities, surf some more. Publish said findings as gospel, surf some more. Wait a short period of time whilst some other researchers dabble around with the same scientific crap to disprove previous accepted gospel. Then finally obtain another grant to disprove the new gospel while surfing more. It’s beautiful isn’t it!
what if you get eaten by a shark?
Whoa, hold fast. I didn’t say chum and surf in the same spot!