Shark attack on cuttlefish researchers

This, according to reports, is a popular beach. Perhaps there ought to be an enforced ban on fishermen chumming so close to popular beaches.
 
erich orser said:
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
 
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!
 
Righty said:
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
 
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.
 
Righty said:
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.
 
PurpleTentacle said:
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! :biggrin2:. 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:
 

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