So I took my girlfriend to the local
Sea Life Centre today and I've come away a bit annoyed.
The Sea Life centre push a lot of messaing now about conservation and endangered species, particularly sharks and turtles.
One of the things we went to see today was the feeding of the black tip reef sharks, bamboo sharks and nurse sharks they have at the sea life centre. Before the feeding, we were giving a 10 minute "educational" talk about sharks by one of the staff there.
Among his points were:
1) "The Blacktip Reef Shark can grow six feet long and swim in just 30cm of water, so next time you're on holiday and decide to go for a paddle, watch yourself!"
2) "Bull sharks are the most dangerous shark. They just wake up grumpy and they'll attack you for no reason at all!"
3) (While holding a shark jawbone seized from H&M Customs and talking about how many rows of teeth sharks have) "Yup, if that got a hold of you, it would rip the skin right off your arm!"
What annoyed me was this absolute sensationalist tripe being spouted out to a large contingent of young children in the crowd. Children are very impressionable and this "expert" basically instilled them with fear about sharks and how dangerous they were and would attack for no reason.
This is of course, not to mention all the shark merchandise in their gift shop, which generally depicts sharks out to be "evil" with frowns and evil expressions.
It upset me that, if people grow up scared of sharks, they are never going to want to protect them and would quietly probably like the "man eaters" to be killed off.
Does this sound like I'm being over-touchy about the issue or do you think I have a valid point? I am considering writing a letter to the Sea Life Centre to see what they have to say about it, pushing the endangered message on one hand and then making out sharks are dangerous predators on the other.
(If you hadn't seen it,
shark attacks stats from 1990-2008)
