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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

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

Adam, I used to do a lot of freediving when I lived in the tropics. I miss it, basically would not be caught dead- no pun intended- swimming in open water here is SW WA. But I still manage to go for a swim most days and not worry about sharks. I was swimming at Wharton beach, which is in the photo set above, a week ago and it was beautiful. That is a beach where we had a kid lose a leg to a big White Shark a few years back. Virtually all of our attacks happen out past the breakers in more open water where the risk is far greater, mostly to surfers. If you visit Perth one day its not as if you can't go down to Cottesloe Beach on a hot day and enjoy a dip, hug the shoreline and you'll be right.

Tom, cheers. I am in awe of the work some of these guys are doing. If your asking what Collin Barnett -WA Premier- has planned next that would most likely be ensuring the James Price Point gas project goes ahead. A lot of protest here about that one, to sum it up briefly its your standard lets go mine some shit in a wilderness area because there's a buck to be made job. Once the ink dries on that one i think he's a bit keen on turning our state into the world's foremost supplier of yellow cake uranium. Hopefully he won't be in office that long though. Then we'll have a new face to put to the same old issues. You know how it is though right, got to have a strong economy, got to keep growing, got to keep the hippies from ruining progress.

Dean, that would be awesome if you wanted to do something. Hit me up if you want to thrash out some idea's. I'm based down in Esperance at the moment but get up to Perth semi regularly. AIDC is around the corner, always a good place to pitch idea's.

Wayne, got a few croc stories myself. Terrifying beasts. Worse than sharks by a mile. And yet, protected and after 30 years on the comeback are in huge numbers. No-one's calling for a cull on them [well, actually yes of course there are some idiots] because no-one has any doubt that you need to respect the fact that they are king of their domain.

To everyone who's posted offering help and moral support thanks a lot, lets hope this goes somewhere.
 
Was looking at a project in that part of the world recently, if it comes off the back burner as I hope, happy to swing by Perth with underwater Epic and contribute what I can to saving the sharks. Keep me posted.

redseapictures@gmail.com
 
It is a shame indeed, I've been very active on twitter about this planned cull, which is what it is in effect. Baiting for sharks off of popular beaches to 'mitigate' numbers. A sorry state indeed. There are so many point on which the arguments can be built against this knee jerk reaction but I fear the politicians are fixed firmly on their decisions. Makes me wonder what amount of say the general public have in many aspects of our community governance these days. It gets deep.

Many topics out there are ready to have a film made about them but with the economic climate it's getting hard to raise capital. I'm in the process of crowdfunding for my planned shark and manta ray fisheries project to be filmed around Indonesia. It involves elements of illegal fishing, dynamiting Dolphin pods to use as shark bait and even human trafficking when shark catches get low. I've raised almost $14k out of a shooting budget of $75k so more funding drives will take place after this current Indiegogo project wraps in 13 days.

We are passionate about many projects, it's finding the means to pay to produce them is always the stumbling block.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
I am actually going on a white shark filming trip with Rodney Foxes team and a great shooter from Sydney in a couple of months....will be using my Epic and a Blackmagic Pocket...happy to donate the footage Im going to shoot there if anyone is doing any sort of awareness films or trailers.
 
Trevor Emmerson said:
Wayne, got a few croc stories myself. Terrifying beasts. Worse than sharks by a mile. And yet, protected and after 30 years on the comeback are in huge numbers. No-one's calling for a cull on them [well, actually yes of course there are some idiots] because no-one has any doubt that you need to respect the fact that they are king of their domain.

To everyone who's posted offering help and moral support thanks a lot, lets hope this goes somewhere.
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I'm actually a little interested in following your efforts myself. I know a lot of stuff I suggest here is a bit over the top end game, but if you do a simple documentary in the cull and if it turns out good, you can try to get funding for a bigger documentary and recycle some footage. I'm glad you are in WA rather than LA, as your post profile says, I was a but worried how you would run something like this from LA. There must be groups, conservation groups, international groups, that might like to fund such a documentary for a full crew research etc. I would hit up both sides if it was me, I have a contract that last out I'm going to objectively look at the objective evidence for both sides, and present the objective opinions of both sides. Notice how I say 'objective' a bit, it not only assures that I'm hoping to give fair treatment for the funding, but gives an out so you can freely chuck away unobjective wacko arguments.

Crocodiles, yeah respect their domain, but the issue is that their domain is anywhere they so please to go, remember the croc that trapped those people up a tree for days hundreds of kilometers inland during flooding. You can't go swimming in most rivers without there potentially being a unseen hidden croc under the water and they can travel 50 miles out at sea or inland up rivers. They are all competitor predators with us, and normally natural selection prevails. We care more about these animals than the many times more fish, birds, and pigs they eat, don't they have as much right to be cared about and not to be terrorised, interesting we don't care about them, victims are not so interesting. Another silent argument to explore. If you want to go bigger and want somebody to jazz up a script, let me know. I think this is excellent stuff. We haven't had a good national naturalist series since around the time the Taylors retired. My old friend that knew them was back in town this week I hear. If you don't get a team organised for whatever plan you go with, I can try to get in contact with them for you. The Taylors originally were pro shark hunting I think, then relented and swapped around to conservation. They probably have lots of contacts in the doco industry. I think only Valery is alive now.

I forgot about a particularly tragic story. A young friend of mine, sort everybody loved, full of energy. Was working on a trawler around 5 years ago, up the cape in that massive bay, and he went to swim from one boat to another for a party late one night and disappeared. The bay is notoriously full of crocodiles. It was well publicised.

There is literally tons of material around on these things. A interesting one was a giant 40-50 foot long giant crocodile in the Barron River next to Cairns early last century. There was a painting found in the Lifeline op shop that they thought might have been of it, sort of unusual, a bulging back. You also here of 40 foot shark legends too out in the Pacific. Of course these all fit in with the sizes of megaforna (is that the word) period ending supposedly over ten thousand years ago. There should be leftovers. You also here of historical references to dinosaurs around the world, a friend of mine was again telling me of carvings in South America depicting hunting etc of dinosaurs. Areas deep in the jungle is where you expect the last of extinct animals to have held out (most likely ideas now since original colonisation of South America due to human activity. In matter of fact there has been reports of many giant megaforna like reptiles in Cape York in the media. I even had a room mate at school that said he had seen a Tasmania Tiger up there, but he was a bit arsy in telling stories. Not impossible though, as the Tiger was originally on the mainland too.

I'm actually thinking of doing a doco on giant snakes up here, I've come across some really interesting stuff, also interested in the giant reptiles and lost civilisation stuff (there is some interesting stuff around up here about and a friend of mine new a group researching it, and had been in intelligence). There was a Egyptian artifact found were I live (literally like a kilometer or less away) which is one of the original settlements and a ancient trading site. I'm literally surrounded by great doco stuff here, and knew around 5 people who's lives are suitable for a feature film plus Tarzan who is from Russian royalty that one of these friends did all the research on to write a book, but died. He had approached Mel Gibson's mob, Icon pictures is it, but never finished writing the pitch for a film. Some great stuff. My friend travelled out to different parts of Australia interviewing people for maybe ten or more years. I was supposed to do the doco after the book. I'm surrounded by this stuff but can't afford to do a thing about it due to bad health, no team or funding. Maybe I should get that Panasonic. That's like ten films on my doorstep.

You know what Trevor, I say just go and do it, you never know where it will get you and the opportunities that might come. I would not mind learning sound, maybe I could join you. Give me a go pro a long stick and some shark bait and see what interesting footage we can get. but I'll need funding to get and stay there. Actually one of those remote controlled drones too, and attach some shark bait to that .. Always wanted to go to WA.
 
Mark, I think there is even more excellent opportunity for funding on Trevor's one, as it has big publicity and international focus of environmental groups making them more eager to fund it. I'm heartened to see you guys turning up on Trevor's vision, because given the strength of you guys and the teams, the capability to do it and do it well is there. Thanks guys for supporting him.
 
Indeed it has great potential. A good story and a LOT of folks passionate about this cause.

I'm sure someone will pick it up and run with it...

Cheers,
Mark.
 
What is actually not talked about is the opposite effect that this could and most likely will have...

This Shark Cull, might in fact, while give a temporary happy ending to the high number of captured Sharks, can and most likely will give a very NEGATIVE outcome in the long run, were the incredible sensitivity that Sharks have to sense activity, smell blood... Which might and again most likely attract in turn, much larger numbers of this DINOSAUR AGE survivors more reasons to actually come to this shores, resulting in more attacks to humans...
 
... sharks are not going to be happy. we'll have to set up a council with them or something. is there any immediate action that can be taken right now? who can we send to warn the sharks away? (:
 
Actually i think there is a group of folks prepared to just go out there and sabotage the baits as soon as they set them, they'd be prosecuted if caught but since there is nothing anyone can do to stop it legally. Seems people are prepared to make that sacrifice if necessary so good on them.

Of course they'd be putting themselves at risk doing so as they'd most likely do it at night. As i think Ketch was getting at there are several scenarios where setting baits could easily lead to more attacks. For a start using bait is attracting sharks to an area they might not of even been interested in in the first place. Then there's probability people will get a false sense of security and more go into the water and venture further into the water assuming they are safe when they are not. And then there are the hard core activist types who are going to put themselves in harms way deliberately because they want to cut lines, debate hooks, or blockade the shark fishing boats. So yeah, a lot of potential for this to blow up in peoples faces.

Hey Mark, I follow you on twitter. You do good work, really hope you can raise the funds to get your project finished. In my opinion illegal shark fishing and finning is obviously a way worse issue than this GWS cull, glad there are people like you out there fighting the good fight.

Dominic, hope your shoot goes well. Cheers for the offer with the footage. To clarify though the reason for the thread was more to raise awareness in the hope someone better suited than me would be out there who could take this on and do it justice. I've got passion for the cause but am humble enough to realise the scope of making a compelling natural history feature is way, way beyond me. I do find all these offer's encouraging though and so plan to devote a bit of my time now looking into how i might leverage something small and within my means into something larger. I know from experience though that these epic passion projects have a better chance of turning you into a bankrupt than making it to the final cut.

Thanks Wayne I guess I should change my location, not living in LA anymore.
 
Here is a qoute from the Kwazulu-Natal Sharks Board webpage, interesting read;

Discretionary bathing was introduced in the mid 1990s to allow people to swim and surf during the annual Sardine Run. At this time of year almost all the nets at beaches south of Durban are out of the water to avoid heavy mortalities of sharks and dolphins that follow the sardines. Although there are more sharks in the coastal waters of southern KwaZulu-Natal in winter than at any other time of the year, records from the period prior to the introduction of shark nets reveal a very low incidence of shark attack. In the past, pressure from the tourist industry often resulted in hasty reinstallation of shark nets during the Sardine Run. This frequently proved disastrous, killing large numbers of sharks and dolphins.

http://www.shark.co.za/SharkNetsMore

Shark nets are certainly not a good option, but why are they not being considered as well?
 
These guys one would think as the likely lads to take such a project on and one would hope would find it within themselves to do it.

Given that a significant funding entity for the Super Predator documentary was the W. A. State Government's Screenwest and that the same W. A. State Government is paying for the cull operation, I would somehow doubt that financing would be granted for an anti-shark cull documentary coverage. This place also is too small a parochial pond to be alienating the local film funding resource if one hopes for a future in the industry without having to do the Irish potato famine as in "to get up you must first get out" ( Attrib. Mary Durack "Kings In Grass Castles" ).


--------- http://abccommercial.com/contentsales/program/search-oceans-super-predator --------

If I knew how to make live screens appear in the body of this post I would but do not, so you will have to click on the link itself.
 

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paulherrin said:
... sharks are not going to be happy. we'll have to set up a council with them or something. is there any immediate action that can be taken right now? who can we send to warn the sharks away? (:
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He, he, I've been thinking of a evolutionist parody story where octopuses become the dominate species in a million years, and in space. So the same could be applied to apex predators.

Robert Hart said:
These guys one would think as the likely lads to take such a project on and one would hope would find it within themselves to do it.

Given that a significant funding entity for the Super Predator documentary was the W. A. State Government's Screenwest and that the same W. A. State Government is paying for the cull operation, I would somehow doubt that financing would be granted for an anti-shark cull documentary coverage. This place also is too small a parochial pond to be alienating the local film funding resource if one hopes for a future in the industry without having to do the Irish potato famine as in "to get up you must first get out" ( Attrib. Mary Durack "Kings In Grass Castles" ).


If I knew how to make live screens appear in the body of this post I would but do not, so you will have to click on the link itself.
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What was it„ giffs/tiffs/PNG support multiple frames, I have seen it used on my delete thread I think. The funniest thread before they deleted it.

As for funding, depends on who is applying, from where. The funding body might even be sympathetic.. But if they objectively do both sides it might be appreciated.
 
The world is a f*cked up place, factory farms, puppy farms, shark culls, whale culls, dolphin culls, Seaworld/Zoos, gmos, pesticides, massive antibiotics in our food, massive spy programs, suspension of bill of rights, drone bombing US citizens, there is no end to the f*ckedupness I see around me and said spin of it, by all sides. I used to not pay attention to it, I used to avoid watching the docs that brought attention to these social justice issues. But then I got cancer at 25 and opened my eyes to more then just Michael Moore films/discovery channel, and started to try to understand the f*cked up stuff around me, be it massive NSA spy programs, fictional WMDs, animal cruelty, ecosystem destruction, open core nuclear melt downs, or the rising cost of healthcare

I would donate any amount of my my time or life to help end a single problem for mankind/earth. As much as I get upset watching Whale Wars, The Cove, Gasland, Blackfish, you name it, the reality is AMERICA is FAR WORSE then any of these other causes, we have enabled the corporate end of the world and have propelled humankind towards extinction in the name of profits, profits that don't matter in an unlivable world, a world we are fast approaching and seem incapable of stopping. Mcdonolds owns one forth of the worlds cows, and keeps them so full of antibiotics and bs chemicals that its probably whats getting us sick, and it makes more global warming emissions then all of the cars combined, in fact we wouldn't even have a global warming problem if more of you were willing to eat less meat (western diets are much more meat driven then eastern diets, also corresponds to our obesity and healthcare costs).


There are many social justice issues that haven't been told or haven't been told well, and still need to be told and I intend to fight this fight for as long as I can, God willing we can beat wall street and save this planet! Anything you need I am on board, but I think gas and factory farms are my main targets in life, I would risk prosecution to stop them, they are the true worst scourges of the world and will be responsible for the down fall of this planet
 
PS Civil disobedience could end the cull, I'd cut the nets myself
 
Lotta guts there Brian, that's what it's going to take to fight this one. Re your impassioned post above, saw that the JP Morgan CEO, one of the Wall Street guys directly responsible for the 20-billion dollar real estate market meltdown, was just given 20 million dollars for his continuing services to humanity. Yikes!

Thread drift, back to the imperiled Oz White Sharks...
 
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