White Shark cull, Western Australia: Someone make a film about this please

[Trevor Emmerson]

Hi guys, not sure how much international news coverage this has had but to my deep shame there is a White Shark cull about to take place in my home state of Western Australia. Its something I'm pretty disgusted with personally, as are a lot of west aussies, and I really wish I had the resources to make a film about it but I don't. Someone should though.

If there is anyone out there looking for a new project I think it would be worth looking into.

My pitch: You can't get a much more awesome subject in filmmaking that the Great White Shark. We've got heaps of them. So far as governments and policy making goes, you couldn't get a more inept bunch of idiots than the blokes who hatched this plan to start indiscriminately killing an iconic, and protected, species. There is no shortage of passionate people with important messages and stories here on the ground. And lastly, you could not ask for a more beautiful place to shoot a natural history story than this. Western Australia has one of the vastest and most beautiful coastlines on the planet.

I've tried to upload some snaps i've taken in the last couple of week's around my local area, hard to take a bad photo down here.

If anyone out there wants to adopt this cause to make the next Dolphin Cove type doc i'd be willing to go above and beyond to help make it happen. Anyone else feel free to pour scorn on the senselessness of the cull, sign one of the many petitions floating around etc.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Your right on all points. This is a bad situation that needs covering. Don't know what we can do to help but as a company that film extensively underwater Id like to see this happen.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Well, I normally don't want to appear too politically incorrect without just cause. But I would luv to come along if somebody licensed and paid me too shoot the b...... It would be useful if somebody also did a balanced documentary including the flip side of it. Questions: Rough species (pest species), wrecking the marine eco system depleting fish stocks, or not What part sharks play in the eco system. What sharks are needed in the eco system to maintain it, or to have an good alternative eco system. Etc. Then we can make informed rejection or acceptance of such culls.

If we remember the series River Monsters, we can see a number of remaining species of aqualife that have been depleted from many river systems and coasts around the world (some maybe by sharks) that we could argue should be reintroduced to every river and coast to restore the eco system, which we would not want near us. We could argue for lions and bears in our neighborhoods or New York as well. The eco systems we see are the result of a number of extinctions over time, some natural or by other species. Eco systems are dynamic. We see also a dramatic drop in death by wild animals on land and sea by culling at least the biggest members of species (leading to genes for smaller members of a species). So the real question becomes is what sort of sustainable eco system do we want.

If anybody would like to make a documentary objectively addressing all these students due of the argument, then you could gave a try Ely great documentary.

Hats off to Trevor and anybody that would like to extend it into the flip side.

I would suggest that you contact the Taylor's, I used to have a friend around who is a friend of theirs.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

On the flip side, Vick Hislop is the guy to see, and there was an incident in the 80's in North Queensland where there was a trawler wreck and a shark was hunting down crew members, one was bitten in half and then swam into the jaws of the shark to save his friends. My cousin was married to his cousin. During world war 2 there was at least one instance of something like 1200-1500 sailors left at sea after a battle and the sharks moved in throughout the night. I would prefer friendlier sharks myself.

Vick apparently found evidence of people missing at sea being taken by sharks. But as I said, the eco questions above determine if it is worth having them. If we wanted to restore the eco system to some supposedly pristine state before humans (which was still dynamically changing according to evolutionists) we would need to exterminate all humors, if it could be restored at all. So feel sorry for all the clouds of bait fish (magnificent in itself) they hunt down along WA each year, not the shark.

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

Wayne you make some interesting points. I'd respectfully disagree of course that we have any business trying to engineer human friendly ecosystem's through removal of apex predators. But I'd welcome any kind of study or science applied to better understand the impact such a cull might have. The problem being, this is a knee jerk reaction from a government based on no science whatsoever, that has been widely criticised and condemned by the scientific community as such.

If people expect to be able to go into the ocean and enjoy similar safety as they do in the pool in their backyard good luck to them, maybe they should move to Japan or any of the countless other parts of the world that enjoy a barren seascape due to gross environmental mismanagement.

The Australian coastline is supposed to be an international refuge of sorts for marine life, sure it is heavily fished but its also reasonably well managed. And it is basically wilderness in a lot of area's so enjoys rich biodiversity. Worth protecting I would of thought. There is no reason to jeopardise due to a small number of people being attacked each year, just to placate a portion of the public who have been whipped into hysterics by the media. The risks are minute, and can be eliminated entirely is you choose not to enter the water. Setting a few drum lines isn't going to reduce the risk appreciably at all. Sure they'll kill a few sharks, exactly how many and what percentage of the population that represents or how that impacts the ecosystem or risk to swimmers who could say? They don't know. There is nothing scientific about it. And hopefully that would be a line of inquiry any documentarian would take, ask the questions the government didn't, look for answers they weren't waiting around for.

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

Haha Wayne, just needed a minute to confirm this Vic Hislop character was who I thought. Wow, that would be an interesting interview for sure. The man is a walking talking environmental disaster zone, religious fanatic, conspiracy theorist... One of the few people in the world who could claim almost single handed responsibility, along with the movie Jaws, for a worldwide fear and hatred of sharks thats led to their deliberate annihilation from the sea in the last couple of decades. He'd be on my list of subjects for sure. To anyone reading this, he's worth a google.

A direct quote from his book:

“They cruise around 24 hours a day tearing apart family-oriented animals such as dolphins and dugong, eating or maiming the young as well as their mother and father… Surely the creator must have realised the terrible imbalance and injustice and must have put me here to help and restore the balance and justice for all the gentle creatures of the sea”.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Few years ago, when I purchased the underwater housings for the Red Epic, and first tried to get my OWD (Open Water Diving) certificate, before I was dimmed "Medically UNFIT" to dive, it was exactly for a cause that had to do with how Human Overfishing of majestic creatures such as the Wales and Sharks are effecting the Oceans, and up to what level, is and will damage the Ecosystem in an overall manner, and how would effect us "The Humans" main cause for this to begin with...

Some great points have already been made here...

What I'll add to it, is that because been an Islander of birth, I love Water, and love all creatures in it, even the most horrible looking monsters, and yes Human heating Sharks and Poison snakes...

So thru a weird chain of events I ended up getting involved in what could have become and truly great DocuFilm...

This would have involved a large list of specialists, including Oceanographers which would have offered inside documentation and guidance to what is happening to our Oceans and what some of the causes re believed to be by the results of recent studies.

Of course the list goes on and on, and don't want to make it a long post, but I believe that to do something like this there is only TWO correct ways to do it, and all others will just be WRONG.

ONE is to do it as we were to do, which is make it a highly precise and documented DocuFilm, to bring all known results of recent studies plus our own, and make them as clear to understand with imagery as possible, as to shake the public's opinion of what they really know so little about it...


TWO is to simply just make a great movie, a story with it that will entertain, and not base the story on trying to prove facts or results of studies, but simply try to capture the audience's hearth in such a way that the UNDERLINE true reason of why the film was made in the first place, just sinks in deep in to their minds without them even knowing that was the first reasoning of the film in the first place.

Avoiding at all cost to try and do a Documentary without all the facts, or at list a good way to bring studies and or anything that would drive a great idea of the repercussions of such actions, and as with everything there is always two sides to the coin, and one would not want to make a project and get deeply involved in just to have their message completely twisted or miss understood, and that when happens sucks and some of us know how hawful that fills.

Either way, if such a project was to come to fruition, and it was to be going on, when I'll be Down-under, I'll gladly help with it in any way I can, and since I am attempting my Diving certification again... I might even be able to bring Dragon M8's own UWH...

 

[Robert Hart]

There have been nation-wide rallies to protest against the cull. - Interestingly, there has been comment attributed to a lifetime fisherman who has observed a trend towards boldness and aggression in great whites. A recent documentary on a mystery predator which chased down and ate a competent great white, showed footage of a great white taking on a metal dinghy trying to overturn it to get at the people inside. He attributes this boldness and aggression to dive-cage tourism. Sharks are routinely burleyed up ( americans call it "chumming" ). Humans and their smells thus become familiar. So apparently in the same way that unthinking and incompetent humans "ruin" a perfectly well-trained horse or pet animal through unwise interactive behaviour, the great whites may become conditioned by training to go after people.

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

Ketch nothing would give me greater pleasure than to tow you and M8 behind a boat in an attempt to capture some extreme GWS footage, talk about a once in a lifetime opportunity! haha.

As a writer I'd like to believe there must be more than 2 ways to tell any story without being wrong. But of the 2 ways you suggest, I think i prefer the second. Experts have a place in any debate, but documentary is still narrative and you have to get a human perspective and like i said, no shortage of passionate people doing interesting things surrounding this debate.

Documentary or no, if you are willing to travel as far as Perth anytime between now and September, I could certainly show you some sights.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Sounds good Trevor, let's see first if I will finally get my PADi Advance OWD certification... Otherwise if I do make it in time either way, I can just stay dry... on board....

And yes, of course there are many other ways to tell a story, juts that IMO when it comes about this type of stories, I think of only this two ways to be the best in represent one or the other end.

 

[Adam Johnson]

My late night rant begins now -

This is very sad all around. I grew up wanting to visit Perth my entire life. I am a snorkeling/ freediving nut and absolutely love animals (minus all the killer spiders in Australia lol). Anyways, I always wanted to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef and enjoy the ocean in Australia but I learned that it was fairly dangerous waters with the plethora of Great Whites. Don't get me wrong Florida has more shark attacks then anywhere else in the world, but the fatality rate in Australia and Africa has always been too much for me to consider snorkeling in those places. No matter how beautiful and amazing the water and aquatic life may be there and how cool it would be to see...nothinh gives us the right to simply destroy these amazing predators so we can simply enjoy it more and to attract more people. This attempt to adjust the shark attacks is simply a shark holocaust. These are predators living in their environment trying to survive. Yes, it really hurts me and makes me sick when I hear about a fatal shark attack, especially when it occurs in the EXACT area I was snorkeling in a month before. It is paralyzingly scary and unfortunately makes me think twice nowadays about getting in. But that's the fact of the matter. This is the ocean...just like the jungle it the savanna. You go in unarmed to play where dangerous predators live and eat you are rolling the dice. At the same token, it's not an automatic that you will even see a shark or other aquatic life. But many people who do venture into the ocean are simply not educated about when and where predators hunt and what signs to look for.

I for one do not like to swim in the ocean. It makes me uncomfortable. I only like to explore and witness (mostly film/ photograoh actually). It's a majestic experience and one I truly crave for. But with the increase in sharks moving in closer and closer to shore and popular destination spots it makes me more hesitant then I used to be. But as much as I crave for that experience, I would never endorse a mass slaughtering for my sheer enjoyment of snorkeling/ freediving. That's just insane. Moreover, if one were to try and seriously study the issues at hand they would begin to discover a pattern in how sharks, especially Great Whites are beginning to come in closer and "invade" new areas because other sea life such as sea lions and other aquatic creatures that are rebounding in numbers are making it more enticing for the sharks to come in and even stick around. The other real issue and possibly biggest in my mind is the melting of the ice caps and warming/ changing of the ocean water temperature. Sharks are extremely sensitive creatures that are particular about the temperature of water they live in, especially Whites. I personally believe the warming of water is pushing them into different territory where they are more comfortable and at the same time they are establishing new territories along the way where the food is plentiful (off the coast of Massachustes for example & Hawaii seems to be increasing big time as well.

Anyways, my stance is simple. The ocean is beautiful, magical, but also dangerous & ruthless at times. Education is key. And we should never pretend or attempt to transform the ocean into a playground or pool. It's Mother Nature. Raw & beautiful in all it's glory

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Exactly Adam...

In the opposite, I can say that I also love the green and majestic Jungles I have visited around the world... So what? To be safer and not as ON ALERT should I start campaigning for the mass killing of al poisons snakes?

This are the creatures on hearth that fascinate and frighten me the most, yet I have the deepest respect for this creatures as I have for any and all others in this planet.

I only have and will kill again at any given time for self defense, yet it has happened less and less in past most recent years, as I have continued to grow respect and find ways of defending protecting myself form unwanted encounters without the need to kill them, as after all I am the done entering their territory, and even if I could say that it is ours, mine as much as theres in and all around this beautiful planet of ours, we simply can't just kill at will for what ever unjustified reason when it can be avoided...

Otherwise we'll be doing this to ourselves pretty soon...

Oh... Wait... We have been doing this to ourselves for thousands of years already... no wonder...

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Trevor, link to this thread posted over on the Bubble Blowers thread, a few guys there with extensive White Shark filming chops:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?87443-The-Gentleman-s-Underwater-Bubble-Blower-Thread

Question: once this guy has had his way with the sharks, where is he likely to turn his twisted efforts to next?

 

[Dean Butler]

Just wrapping up a Scarlet shot short film tomorrow. Maybe after that I could shoot something. It's a good idea. I can tell you as a person who has lived in Perth all my life. Myself and most other West Australian's are outraged by this. It's their ocean (the marine life), they need to be there to survive. We go in to cool down and for fitness and fun. Perth has some of the most beautiful metropolitan beaches in the world. It's a choice and a risk you take every time you go in. A very small one. Might see if I could look at a doco piece on this. Any ideas? I guess I'll just make some calls. By the way, I wouldn't be too worried about swimming in the ocean in Perth or WA. The chances of even seeing a shark in the wild here is very small. I've had encounters twice. Once a 5m great white (I was sitting with my legs dangling off a jetty when it came up... still scary) and another time just a reef shark. And honestly most west Australians would never have seen a great white in the flesh. It's always there in the back of your mind though.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

We shouldn't be messing with apex predators.


Pretty sure nature takes care of the balance of things on our own without our meddling.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

It's all so very, very sad.

 

[Michael Dalton]

likely Andy Casagrande will do something. He's been posting on FB a lot about this. He does a lot of work with sharks and has a huge network. An epic owner too.

 

[paulherrin]

happy to help from here offering post/finishing

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Wayne you make some interesting points. I'd respectfully disagree of course that we have any business trying to engineer human friendly ecosystem's through removal of apex predators.

You're welcome Trevor.

Incredible amount of posts to reply to here and nearly 3 am.

But I'd welcome any kind of study or science applied to better understand the impact such a cull might have.

True. I'm sick of emotive biased documentaries and when 1% of the population rises up they start acting like they are the majority and eventually might be through mesmerizing the people rather than rational debate. We have lost our brains in this country, the opportunities of the 24 hour news cycle encourage rubbish that people are getting used to. I long for objective multi sided discussion sometimes rather than listen to right and left wing biased nut cases drooling out drivel. I mean, I see much better conversations on US TV. Tacky Australia again.

The problem being, this is a knee jerk reaction from a government based on no science whatsoever, that has been widely criticised and condemned by the scientific community as such.

Yep knee jerk, I think they should have done it years ago.

If people expect to be able to go into the ocean and enjoy similar safety as they do in the pool in their backyard good luck to them, maybe they should move to Japan or any of the countless other parts of the world that enjoy a barren seascape due to gross environmental mismanagement

What was the name of that NZ cartoon where a kid had a shark who moved into his swimming pool (and home) or was that local?

According to global warning theories, the oceans will be filled with jellyfish, alga sting rays and sharks. You see where it is going, there is a lot of great content everybody is talking about, enough for a feature. Who did Canetoads the movie, that is one narrative example to look at. I knew a few people in it, though I don't know where they got any of the people from my town (great actors).

Setting a few drum lines isn't going to reduce the risk appreciably at all. Sure they'll kill a few sharks, exactly how many and what percentage of the population that represents or how that impacts the ecosystem or risk to swimmers who could say? They don't know. There is nothing scientific about it. And hopefully that would be a line of inquiry any documentarian would take, ask the questions the government didn't, look for answers they weren't waiting around for.

I'm a writer technologist, you can make a series of under water drones to grid search and kill every shark out there, or every snake etc. So it would probably be time to prove a case of need to keep sharks or not, before somebody does it. Personally I think they are a great food source.

Frankly, you could stick lions, tigers, snakes, crocodiles, bears etc on three large island reserves and safely have them continue on. But sharks, I don't think you can do that in the open ocean. Specie on specie extinction happens, even the geckoes in my place try to kill each other. We are part of the nature of this planet too. I personally prefer to see species preserved, but we only need to preserve some more desirable from a species. Still, more argument topics for the film.

Haha Wayne, just needed a minute to confirm this Vic Hislop character was who I thought. Wow, that would be an interesting interview for sure. The man is a walking talking environmental disaster zone, religious fanatic, conspiracy theorist... One of the few people in the world who could claim almost single handed responsibility, along with the movie Jaws, for a worldwide fear and hatred of sharks thats led to their deliberate annihilation from the sea in the last couple of decades. He'd be on my list of subjects for sure. To anyone reading this, he's worth a google.

A direct quote from his book:

“They cruise around 24 hours a day tearing apart family-oriented animals such as dolphins and dugong, eating or maiming the young as well as their mother and father… Surely the creator must have realised the terrible imbalance and injustice and must have put me here to help and restore the balance and justice for all the gentle creatures of the sea”.

. I was not aware he was famous like that, and I doubt he has had much impact worldwide on shark numbers. The biggest impact has been the illegal Asian sharkfin trade and fishing etc.

Vic had his Shark show site locally here years ago, saw him on the news a few times, never went there or met him.

Don't forget stingrays, Steve died just up the coast here too. But you can see how people live around other dangerous creatures around northern Australia. But crocodile and sharks are another thing. You definitely don't want to swim in a river/ocean with crocodiles (our local one apparently leaves swimmers alone, but that is just one and being in a river with a heap of them you usually can't see us another thing). Got some funny stories about crocs.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

So thru a weird chain of events I ended up getting involved in what could have become and truly great DocuFilm...

This would have involved a large list of specialists, including Oceanographers which would have offered inside documentation and guidance to what is happening to our Oceans and what some of the causes re believed to be by the results of recent studies.

Of course the list goes on and on, and don't want to make it a long post, but I believe that to do something like this there is only TWO correct ways to do it, and all others will just be WRONG.

ONE is to do it as we were to do, which is make it a highly precise and documented DocuFilm, to bring all known results of recent studies plus our own, and make them as clear to understand with imagery as possible, as to shake the public's opinion of what they really know so little about it...


TWO is to simply just make a great movie, a story with it that will entertain, and not base the story on trying to prove facts or results of studies, but simply try to capture the audience's hearth in such a way that the UNDERLINE true reason of why the film was made in the first place, just sinks in deep in to their minds without them even knowing that was the first reasoning of the film in the first place.

Avoiding at all cost to try and do a Documentary without all the facts, or at list a good way to bring studies and or anything that would drive a great idea of the repercussions of such actions, and as with everything there is always two sides to the coin, and one would not want to make a project and get deeply involved in just to have their message completely twisted or miss understood, and that when happens sucks and some of us know how hawful that fills.

Either way, if such a project was to come to fruition, and it was to be going on, when I'll be Down-under, I'll gladly help with it in any way I can, and since I am attempting my Diving certification again... I might even be able to bring Dragon M8's own UWH...

You said that doco could have become a great picture, so it did not go through. This might give you access to great footage, experts and interviews. Would it be worth taking the ideas here to them for a new production?

I agree with your ideas of two ways best to make it. I prefer a fact based doco with some story maybe. It is not really life on earth, or like the Taylor reef documentaries. or Cane toads, but something in between might help. As far as a story comical documentary instead, a few of us could get together and film it top gear style . One a tofee, one series, one comedian. Pity we don't have the old 470hp Mustang boat anymore, if it came over here, but too small (Jim's not the only one who likes monster vehicles but at least ours had style).

If you guys wanted to go past the great white sharks and the cull to other creatures. you could call it something like Wild Seas, or Dangerous Seas. There probably is enough around Australia down to Antarctica to fill three feature documentaries, so as you can see here you guys should not run out of content.

I think it is rather suitable to attract good funding past the cull, even 3D.

Anyway about my examples, Taylor had a more explorer adventure style. Canetoads was a fact spattered but a bit comical, story narrative with interviews.

My late night rant begins now -

This is very sad all around. I grew up wanting to visit Perth my entire life. I am a snorkeling/ freediving nut and absolutely love animals (minus all the killer spiders in Australia lol). Anyways, I always wanted to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef and enjoy the ocean in Australia but I learned that it was fairly dangerous waters with the plethora of Great Whites. Don't get me wrong Florida has more shark attacks then anywhere else in the world, but the fatality rate in Australia and Africa has always been too much for me to consider snorkeling in those places.

We rarely get fatalities around here. The more populated beaches have shark nets that more cull sharks than keep them out. Occasionally one of us will get brushed or bumped (water is fairly brown here). A friend of mine that Dives, told me sharks were not such a issue, but coming across shoals of Barracuda, (I think) under a reef was scary, but that was a couple decades ago. I don't know if we have that many great whites here, in the south and Western Australia they do.

In Australia there generally are not many attacks. There was a famous attack on a naval diver in Sydney Harbour some years ago, I was actually staying at a friends place a few kilometers across the harbour from the base. There were a attack or two at Bondi Beach too, but apparently there had been virtually no deadly attacks for a very long time.

Exactly Adam...

In the opposite, I can say that I also love the green and majestic Jungles I have visited around the world... So what? To be safer and not as ON ALERT should I start campaigning for the mass killing of al poisons snakes?

This are the creatures on hearth that fascinate and frighten me the most, yet I have the deepest respect for this creatures as I have for any and all others in this planet.

I'm still trying to find the one in my house. My father thinks it might be a poisonous snake (Taipan), but I don't know, only found a 4.5 foot skin. I heard some sudden noise when I went to the kitchen before about head height, but it might be geckos again. I think it might have gone out of the hole in the window I found, but there was also a slit cut in a window too. Reminds me of that time that death ada tried to get me again (I don't know if I have venom resistance because I think he got me in the dark before and I got rather sick and recovered).