Cristina Zenato Commercial Shark Divings Great New Voice

Baiting at Isla Guadalupe 2005

Thanks to some simply awful self inflicted media coming out of South Africa this month the world of sharks, commercial shark diving, and yes shark baiting has blown up again.

We go through this cycle once a year, but this time thanks in large part to Chris Fischer and the circus surrounding the tragic death of a young South African at the hands of a white shark, this cycle seems a bit more frantic with anti-cage diving folks finding some wind in their sails to produce an onslaught of hysteria that would make even Peter Benchley cringe.

Thankfully the commercial shark diving world has Cristina Zenato who has begun to post her observations on our industry in a way that's refreshing, to the point, and for those who have an issue with commercial shark diving, informative.

We have been fans of Cristina for quite a few years and watched her quiet rise through the industry with anticipation. She's a smart, edgy, no nonsense kind of person who speaks to the issues surrounding sharks with a compassionate voice.

Read her latest blog post  Shark Diving, Shark Feeding and Common Sense.

This is as good as it get's and for our industry the timing is perfect.

Simply defining the interaction with all sharks as a feeding or a non-feeding situation is too simplistic. It would collect approximately 400 species of sharks under the single umbrella of generalized gray, tubular, finned, toothed creatures who just swim around the oceans behaving as we would want them to behave. Instead we can, and should, take the time to learn how each and every shark species behaves. This can be a controversial and difficult topic to present -- please understand that there will always be unique situations and habitat niches. As with any complex issue, knowledge and understanding are key.

 Kudos Cristina.