Nowadays many divers pay a lot of money for trips with guaranteed shark encounters. Proud photographers share their stunning close-ups of oceanic whitetips, great white sharks or hammerheads. The shark dive tourism is a highly lucrative global market, because all of us want to dive with sharks, and we are really sad to hear about the cruel shark finning practices. Many divers join online petitions and urge banning the shark fin trade. We do not want expensive shark fin soups but living sharks...
But the majority of the people around us haven't ever dived and whenever they hear our shark stories they ask: "Weren't you afraid?" We know the shark is the dangerous, there are several attacks every year but as a diver I don't really fear of them. Why the people do who haven't seen any in the sea?
The answer is simple: their "knowledge" based on Hollywood movies. The legend of killer sharks was known for ages, but most of the people faced the beast in 1975. There were movies about sea monsters in the past but the Jaws wasn't an ordinary thriller. The masterpiece of Steven Spielberg seemed really realistic. The cast did a great job, especially Bruce, the mechanical shark who terrorized a small island community. The screenwriter, Peter Benchley later began to feel responsible for the negative attitudes against sharks because the Jaws became a blockbuster and since then many people treat great white sharks as aggressive, evil man-eaters. The Jaws was followed by three sequels: their plots were similar to the original story but the movies weren't that successful. The classic Jaws is still much praised- 37 years and dozens of shark documentaries weren't enough to make great white sharks much more popular.
The article continued here with videos.
No comments:
Post a Comment