http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/08/24/shark.attack.ap/index.html

lol
Cuttlefish have contracted with the local sharks for protection :)
thats at least 2 divers that wont harvesting wild cuttle eggs.
not to sound insensitive but like my friend always said
"Never go ANYWHERE that you are not at the top of the food chain"

I'm sorry, but I can't find anything to laugh about concerning the loss of a life. Most biologist who study cephalopods do so with the ultimate hope that the information we gain will help us to understand and protect them. To do that requires the study of specimens. Unfortunately, the acquisition of animals or observations on them can at times be dangerous. Those risks are accepted. When they are unfortunately realized, we grieve for the loss of the life of a colleague and carry one - sadder, but with conviction that the best way to preserve this planet is to understand it.

Roy

I heard it on the radio in the afternoon, the word "Great White" always inspires fear and spreads the news quick.
But still, it's nothing to laugh about and there are always those who are sacrificed in order for their cause and what they believe in.

yeah we are gonna have to disagree on this one
I always get a chuckle when mother nature gets a little even on humantiy
its not like we dont kill eachother by the thousands every day
stuff like this should go almost unheard in the din of the daily killings we perfom on eachother as a species.

Mizu,

I'd wager that Jarrod Stehbens's colleagues (out of whose hands Stehbens was apparently yanked) don't share your mirth. This was not an instance of Mother Nature taking vengeance upon man. Sharks do not care one way or another about us.

If a cephalopod researcher associated with TONMO were taken by a shark whilst collecting squid eggs, I rather doubt that you'd dare post such ghoulish sentiments.

Clem

No Mizu, as Roy said, I agree that a death of a researcher in the field is a dreadful loss. He was harvesting cuttlefish eggs for research purposes, it's not as if the cuttlefish are on the brink of extinction and he was depriving the marine environment of a unique species, or he was doing this for trivial or fiscal reasons. The poor diver's family, friends and colleagues are going to devastated by his loss. I'm sure he knew the risks when he went diving and was victim of an unfortunate set of circumstances. Perhaps his work was geared towards cuttlefish conservation and would have been of long term benefit to the animals?

I can find no satisfaction whatsoever in this tragedy, no matter the appreciation of cephalopods.

Horrible and tragic for Stehbin's family. And ultimately a loss for us, too, as his work would have interested many TONMO readers.

Of course we kill each other every day, for horrible and sometimes trivial reasons, and everyone of those deaths is a tragedy for the people who love the victims. And yes, people are much worse than any animal predator, particularly because we have the technology to kill so many at one time, and rarely do it for reasons of pure survival. That being said, how can the fact that we as a species are so horrible to our own make the death of one man who fell victim to a hungry shark less of a tragedy? We can grieve over the devastation that man wreaks upon the creatures of the wild and still mourn the death of one man who just happened to be there when that shark was hunting.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-25T044721Z_01_MCC512229_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AUSTRALIA-SHARK.xml

His parents have requested that the shark not be hunted.

According to a report on News.com.au (http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,16375006-521,00.html), the researchers were diving in an area where fishermen chum the waters ("berley" is chum). I can't imagine the students would have gone into the water if they'd been aware of that fact. An awful twist to the story.

Clem

yeah we are gonna have to disagree on this one

I think you'll be alone on this one. I find taking glee at a persons misfortune, for whatever reason, to be icky.
I think taking glee at the death of ceph researches on a site that is frequented by ceph researchers to be bad taste.

I always get a chuckle when mother nature gets a little even on humantiy

Do you chuckle when children are killed by mountain lions?

stuff like this should go almost unheard in the din of the daily killings we perfom on eachother as a species.

Animal attacks usually are covered very well by the news outlets.

This is awful, and my sympathies are with his family.

J

My sympathies are also with his family, his colleagues, and the Australian marine biological community as a whole. I'm glad his family has requested the shark not be hunted.

More on this.


Man Said to Fight Off Shark Before Dying
Man Killed in Australia Shark Attack Said to Calmly Fight Off Predator Before It Killed Him
By ROD McGUIRK
The Associated Press

Aug. 25, 2005 - A marine biologist killed in a shark attack had calmly fought off the predator before it returned and pulled him deep into the water, his diving partner said Thursday.

Police have abandoned the search for body of 23-year-old Jarrod Stehbens following the attack Wednesday off Glenelg Beach on Australia's south coast a region that has seen five fatal shark attacks since 2000.

"Jarrod fought it off initially, then it came back again and grabbed his leg and just took him deeper," Stehbens' diving partner Justin Rowntree said Thursday.

"He seemed quite calm he was trying to get his leg out of its mouth," he added.

Rowntree and Stehbens, both marine biologists at the University of Adelaide, were diving to collect cuttlefish eggs when the shark attacked close to a popular beach in the city of Adelaide. The men were 16 feet from the surface in water 60-feet deep.

Rowntree said he felt helpless in the few seconds before his colleague was dragged to the depths and out of sight.

"Lots of things were going through my mind," Rowntree said. "I just hoped, I just hoped that he'd come up."

Two research colleagues on a boat above did not see the shark approach. Rowntree sensed no danger even when the predator brushed past him.

"I thought it was a dolphin," Rowntree said. "It just nudged my side and I looked around (and saw) just a big white mass."

Rowntree surfaced and was hauled to safety by his colleagues who had by then seen the shark's tail fin slice through water's surface. No trace of Stehbens has been found except for his air tank and buoyancy vest.

The attack, only eight months after an 18-year-old surfer, Nick Peterson, was killed by a 16-foot great white shark at nearby West Beach, led locals to complain that the protected species is posing a growing menace along Adelaide beaches.

The victim's father, David Stehbens, held a news conference Thursday in which he described his son as an experienced diver who knew the underwater environment.

David Stehbens said he had discussed with his son the merits of a shark cull in December when Peterson was killed while being towed on his surfboard by a motorized dinghy.

"He's a marine biologist; he wouldn't want anything killed like that," the father said.

Local fisherman Keith Klemasz said diving was unsafe in the area because so many fishermen dump fish guts and waste in the water.

"It is crazy; they (divers) are shark bait," Klemasz said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1067590

This, according to reports, is a popular beach. Perhaps there ought to be an enforced ban on fishermen chumming so close to popular beaches.

This, according to reports, is a popular beach. Perhaps there ought to be an enforced ban on fishermen chumming so close to popular beaches.

Hear hear!

Another thing that bothers me are the tourist companies who take diving tourists to feed sharks (not sure if it happens in Aussie but off Sth Africa I believe it does). This teaches the sharks to associate the human shape with food.......a bad move in my opinion.

J

Yeah - potato cod are one thing, but trains sharks to think food when the sense people seems like a bad idea.

Well, it made me quite sad...I really love cuttlefish, and would have enjoyed buying him and his buds a set of pints, and talking about the little cephs...have to admire his family, with that amount of grief, and being able to see things the way he perhaps would have wanted them to....wow.

Nothing even remotely funny here though. This is a real blow to the world of ceph research.


greg

Yes, not particularly responsible behavior. Boaters behaving irresponsibly in a manner that leads to an accidental death can be charged with manslaughter. Obviously I don't think retroactively prosecuting people for behavior they might not be aware is dangerous is a solution to anything, but enacting tougher laws, making sure they are well understood, and then enforcing them could prevent this sort of tragic incident recurring.

The ocean is a wild, unpredictable place. There are large predators out there that will view smaller creatures as prey; occasionally somebody is going to suffer an attack. While I certainly don't hold the shark in any malice I definitely do hold responsible anybody who is deliberately attracting them to populated zones. Chumming off a tourist beach?

To use the mountain lion analogy, that would be like hunters or sightseers leaving a trail of raw bacon leading up to a neighborhood playground!

Erich,

Clear some space in your PM box, when you get a moment..

Clem

Do you chuckle when children are killed by mountain lions?

Righty,

Point well, taken; that hits close to home. In this area we always have to keep an eye out for cougars, and its pretty scary when someone is attacked. My wife is a wildlife student, and sometimes I will admit to worrying about her when she does field studies.

Mizu,

While I agree that our inhumanity towards ourselves not warranting a front page story is tragic (look at the U.S. media's baffling lack of interest in the Darfur region), and the deaths of two researchers may seem insignifcant by comparison, there is something to be said about the value of their work and who they were as people. I will say that life has no bit players; everyone is something special to someone. Their work was important, and what great strides they may have done in the name of science are now left to the awful "what ifs" of history.

Keep in mind that the idea of man always being against nature, and nature being malevolent and vindictive are anything except true. Such thoughts erode scientific progress, and fuel fears and collective human contempt for the natural world. And, with all due respect, like joking about the aforementioned situation in Darfur, your remarks were in bad taste considering this is a cephalopod web site.

John

Tragic. Thanks for posting, cthulhu77.

I'm a university research diver. I dive, on an almost daily basis, in places where great whites are not unknown. As an extra added coincidence, my first name is just a different spelling of Jarrod's. The probability of an attack is extremely small but this story drives home the fact that it is greater than zero. My heart goes out to Jarrod's family and colleagues.

Given the parallels mentioned above, it seems safe to assume that anyone who finds this tradgedy amusing would be similarly entertained if I were eaten by a shark. Rather than being uncivil, I'll just let you imagine what my response to those sorts of comments might be.

I find taking glee at a persons misfortune, for whatever reason, to be icky.


Perhaps I am a horrible person, but I think under certain circumstances, it is possible to find a bit of humor in the way a human life has been lost. If it weren't, we would not have the Darwin awards.

That being said, I do not find anything humorous about the death of a guy who was doing ceph research and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That just plain sucks. It's a horrible loss for his family and for ceph enthusiasts, and it's a real bummer for sharks too. Every time someone gets taken by a shark, sharks get some really bad publicity, often times resulting in horrible casualties for the shark population in the area. Everybody loses.

It is very strange in the way that humans always imagine that we are at the top and we are unstoppable, when in reality we're just as helpless as the next. Even with nuclear weapons and all that like, without that, we'd be... extinct, probably.
My heart to his family and my prayers be to him.

Perhaps I am a horrible person, but I think under certain circumstances, it is possible to find a bit of humor in the way a human life has been lost. If it weren't, we would not have the Darwin awards.


You aren't a horrible person! :D. However, I do see a difference between glee and humor - and context is everything.

Some things are so funny that not only will it make me laugh, but I'll also share it with others to spread the cheer.

Some things are funny and will make me laugh, but they're generally "negative" and so I won't repeat them or evangelize.

Yet other things I may find clever, but ultimately inappropriate (or dare I say "offensive"), and therefore it doesn't make me laugh -- in fact it gives me some level of depression that folks would find such matters humorous. Such is the case with this thread, and a large percentage of the Darwin Awards (I must admit there are a few that have struck me funny).

But, I don't think a person can be a "horrible person" for laughing at just about anything (with some exceptions, and assuming the laughter is personal and not being endured by anyone else)... But if they evangelize humor that is "negative" / "disrespectful" / "inappropriate"... :confused: :?:

In any event, I am glad to have had the opportunity at TONMOCON I to verify first-hand that PT is indeed the antithesis of a "horrible person". :smile: