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  White Shark Video
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  • About
    • Monsters - Project Overview
  • White Shark Cafe
  • Education / Events
    • Guadalupe Shark Trip 2020
    • Presentations
    • Upcoming Events >
      • SHARK-O-WEEN 2018
    • Bookings
    • Feedback
    • Past Events >
      • Shark Night
      • Sharktoberfest 2018
      • Surfrider Sharktober 2018
      • Surfrider Foundation (San Mateo Chapter)
      • Night Life 2013 "Killer Personalities"
      • 7 Teepees
      • Great White Lies San Francisco Premiere
      • SF March Against the Cull
      • Great White Night 2012
      • Night Life 2011
      • Gentlemen's Club
      • Scuba Squad Divers
      • Sharks and Beer
      • Launch Party / Fundraiser
      • Of Whale and Man
    • FALSE CONSERVATION >
      • OCEARCH >
        • OCEARCH OVERVIEW
        • Internal Damage
        • Fin Damage >
          • Frodo's Fin Damage Timeline
        • OCEARCH's Pregnant Shark Not Pregnant
        • Science...without the Science
        • OCEARCH Videos >
          • Sinking Away
          • Not Stressed
          • Charlie Rose 1
          • Dorsal Fin Damage
          • PAT tags VS. SPOT tags
          • Tagging Options
          • Message to Australia
  • Videos
    • Stupid Things People Say About Sharks
    • Racism and Sharks
    • Connection
    • 360s Drones and Sharks
    • Footage Licensing
    • Tiger Shark Vs. Turtle
    • Guadalupe Cage Dive Guide
    • minioncam
    • Guadalupe White Sharks 2018
    • Product Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Guadalupe 2018 Interview
      • Andre Rerekuru
      • RodneyFox
      • Chris Neff >
        • Cape Cod Cull
      • WalterBernardis
    • SharkMinutes
    • Kid Friendly >
      • Blueprint
    • Feature Films >
      • Monsters >
        • Enterprise Documentary Fund
      • Great White Lies >
        • Film Festivals >
          • Dropbox Links Great White Lies
    • Short Films >
      • Victory Over Sharks
      • Mothers and Children
      • Sentience
      • Elasmo
      • Shark Rescue
      • Balance
      • Shark Affection
      • Purpose
      • To Touch a Killer
      • Swimming In Shark Alley
      • White Shark Behavior: Part 1
      • Connection
      • Farallon Islands
      • Sustainable
      • Fear
    • Quick Bites >
      • Nurse Shark Barbels in Slow Motion
      • Do Sharks Get Cancer?
      • Sydney Harbor Video of White Shark is Fake
      • White Shark Swallows Tuna in One Bite
      • Gentle Biting and Ram Ventilation
      • Hammerhead Love
      • Seal Swims Leisurely Around White Sharks
      • Great White High Five
      • Petting a Nurse Shark
      • White Shark Tail Narrowly Misses Woman
      • Shark Shart ( Great White takes a shit )
      • WSV Preview
    • Elasmo >
      • Elasmo 0
      • Elasmo 1 and 2
      • Elasmo 3
      • Elasmo 3 Short Version
      • Elasmo 4 (Blue Sharks)
      • Elasmo 5 - Great hammerheads
      • White Dream (short)
    • Surf >
      • Surfing With Sharks - Wayne Lynch
      • California >
        • Jetty, Half Moon Bay, 2/16/14
    • The Price of Existence >
      • Criminalizing Natural Behavior
      • Price of Existence Excerpts with Chris Fallows
      • Dr. Neil Hammerschlag Explains Responsible Drum Lining
      • Price of Existence Trailer
      • Global Opposition to the Cull
      • Daniel Wolfe Interview Exerpt
    • Outtakes >
      • Surfer Interview Outtake
      • Avoiding Gansbaai
      • The Bag Boy
    • Samples
    • Videos from Others >
      • Good Vids >
        • White Shark Research in New Zealand
        • The Shark Man (60 Minutes)
        • Baby White Shark Caught
      • Bad Vids >
        • All that is wrong with Discovery wrapped up in one vid
  • Get Involved
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Sharks and Veganism?

What's This Shark Guy Talking About Veganism For?
What’s this shark guy talking about veganism for?  This will be an unpopular video for many people...we don't like change and we don't like to have a way of life called into question.  But some discoveries I've made on my journey are worth at least contemplating.
Watch the video below
I’ve been speaking about the merits of veganism a lot lately (on my non shark account) so maybe I should stop and explain how I, a person who ate meat his entire life and was raised in an agricultural community in the midwest, came to be vegan. What’s this have to do with being a shark advocate and does practicing a vegan lifestyle actually affect the fate of sharks?

“Out of sight, out of mind,” is a recurring theme in my work, and it certainly applies here. You can hear people talk about an issue all day long and it may still never really register until you’ve witnessed the issue in question playing out... and even then we have the capacity to turn a blind eye. But bearing witness repeatedly makes reality hard to ignore.
Change is difficult.  If we can all justify our actions than none of us are the bad guy.  If none of us are the bad guy then we all get to be the good guy.  If we are all the good guy then no one has to change.  Thus there is no change.  Skyler Thomas.  Go vegan for sharks.
Oh, the lies we live
Hearing a statistic such as “ten pounds of murdered animals are discarded for every one pound of targeted animal harvested” is one thing. Witnessing the by catch float down onto your head is another.

Hearing about the destructive practice of long lining and trawling is one thing. Watching a seemingly endless supply of corpses unloaded while you try to eat a seafood sandwich is another.

Both of those examples are taken from real life experiences. I was working as a safety diver on a CBC documentary in the Dry Tortugas when our boat came upon a shrimping boat. It was 2006, I was young and naive and admittedly watched the spectacle unfold with clueless curiosity than horror. Our captain knew the shrimp boat would have by catch, and using that to our advantage to make sure we had sharks to film, we pulled up and offered them beer in exchange for them dumping their by catch overboard while we were in the water. Of course, they thought we were crazy, saying “You’re gonna be in the water? Don’t you know there will be sharks!?” It worked like a charm and all kinds of animals showed up for the feast of discarded by catch…even sea turtles. I didn’t want to think about it at the time, but I can tell you now, without a doubt, I saw at least one sea turtle on the deck of that shrimp boat. Who was I to question these hard working “salt of the earth” men who were just “making a living” as “good ol’ fishermen”?

My God, the horrors that take place on this planet using each of those phrases to mask the truth of what is actually rape for profit.
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These images are only as unrelated as you tell yourself they are
Fast forward to 2013 when I visited Cape Cod to document OCEARCH’s first big campaign there. I was taking a break on the dock of Chatham Harbor having a seafood sandwich when the boats started dumping loads of sharks as if I were watching trucks unload sand. Following the sharks were seemingly endless amounts of skates and rays. I made the film ‘Balance’ on this same trip, discussing the role of white sharks in the ocean. In Cape Cod the grey seal population had been successfully recovering (since law prevented us from sending them into extinction.) With the return of the food source came the return of the natural hunters, white sharks (the signs of a recovering food chain were becoming clear by 2009) and it was amazing to see nature’s response of to trying to keep one population in check by the reintroduction of another. Many fishermen weren’t too happy about the seals, who also wanted to eat fish. I couldn’t help but be stuck by the irony and hypocrisy of the very vocal fishermen who were demanding a cull of the seals as I watched the horror of what we call sustainable fishing unfold before my eyes.

As if on cue, a seal popped his head up in the harbor as the fish were unloaded…his face almost seemed to say, “Can you leave any for me?” Or maybe he was asking for help since a combination of fishing line and rope were cutting deep into his throat.
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So it began with seafood.  But giving up the food I was raised on?! Beef, chicken, pork!?  No way was I giving that up.  It was a "way of life".  Based on the diet of my upbringing, as far as I was concerned, if I hadn't eaten meat I hadn't eaten.

And thus the next lesson.  Change is hard.  We don't like it and rarely are we forced into it.  Learning that something you believed to be true is not true is is also difficult, and quite frankly many of us reject that lesson and choose to believe a lie instead.

So begins the spiral of convenient excuses.  "Those" animals don't mind.  "Those" animals don't suffer.  The animals I eat don't come from "those" places or "those" conditions.  "Hey, I've got to eat, we are meant to eat meat, it's in our very nature".  Perhaps the most disturbing is, "I've tried to be vegan, but it was boring, I like the flavor too much."  So...the entertainment value of something hitting our taste buds justifies suffering on a scale that most of us won't even look at it.
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Fine.  Don't give up meat to reduce suffering.  How about for the lions?  How about for the sharks?  How about to avoid the continuing loss of species due to habitat destruction?  We shark advocates are appalled by the practice of shark finning, both due to its cruelty and its potential to send several species of shark into extinction.  Yet our appetite for livestock has ALREADY sent terrestrial animals into extinction.  It has.  Period.  And it's still happening.  ​
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Fine.  Don't give up meat to reduce suffering.  How about for the lions?  How about for the sharks?  How about to avoid the continuing loss of species due to habitat destruction?  We shark advocates are appalled by the practice of shark finning, both due to its cruelty and its potential to send several species of shark into extinction.  Yet our appetite for livestock has ALREADY sent terrestrial animals into extinction.  It has.  Period.  And it's still happening.  
After a year of being vegan, Skyler Thomas says,
You can stop telling me we "need" meat now.
But we have to eat, right?  Yes, we do.  But we don't have to eat suffering.  We don't have to digest misery.  We don't have to enjoy a banquet of extinction.  We don't.  I'm living proof.  I couldn't be here typing, much less improving.  For those of you getting upset because this is making too much sense and you're switching your defense to one of an emotional arsenal and starting to call me a "vegan pussy" or something like that, come on by and learn fist-hand just how weak a vegetable-powered punch is.  You're wrong.  I was wrong.  I just didn't want to be wrong, like you.
Or go argue your "meat-based-protein is needed for muscle" case to a mountain gorilla (vegetarian) or an elephant (vegetarian). ​
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The argument for feeding the hungry is non-applicable once you realize we can survive and even benefit without consuming meat.  Not that the hungry issue really applied anyway.  None of your farmer friends nor mine are going to bed at night thinking, "How will I feed the hungry?!" Please.  They are weighing profit margins against self-imposed financial obligations, not needs.  Even if farmers were the angels we once pictured them to be, the reality of harvested food is that most of it is wasted.  Out the back door of a restaurant or grocery store, thrown over as by catch, spoiled before reaching the store, or thrown out by you in your own home when you ended up not eating it on time.  We're all guilty of it, but stop talking about the need for food as though we're battling our own starvation when we're tossing out food that actual hungry people would fight for.

The majority of us were raised to engage in social activities that centered around the cooking of an animal.  I never thought twice about it.  It's what I knew.  Barbecues, holiday meals, all those amazing things that hold such great memories.  They were a way of life.  It was traditional.  It was cultural.  Who wants to give up that?  That's a good argument.  It's the same argument used to consume shark fin soup.
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But you say, "I've gotta make a living right?  You want me to just give up my job?!"  My response is also a question.  "Have you ever considered your existence outside the confines of just earning a paycheck?  Is there not, perhaps, a greater purpose and perhaps even a career to go with it that has a greater reward than being an active contributor to the demise of the planet and inflicting suffering on living creatures?"

It may sound like a science fiction film, but our appetite for flesh is sending us on a path where the earth will consist of us and our factory produced meat, and nothing else.  Congratulations to us all, what a world that will be.  Complete domination by humans, with no annoying predators like tigers or great white sharks to deal with.  No turtles, no whales, no elephants, no bears, no bison...No blue, no green.  We won.​
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The first videos from the "Best Case Scenarios" series are below
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  • Shark Blog
    • Watching Humans Blog
  • About
    • Monsters - Project Overview
  • White Shark Cafe
  • Education / Events
    • Guadalupe Shark Trip 2020
    • Presentations
    • Upcoming Events >
      • SHARK-O-WEEN 2018
    • Bookings
    • Feedback
    • Past Events >
      • Shark Night
      • Sharktoberfest 2018
      • Surfrider Sharktober 2018
      • Surfrider Foundation (San Mateo Chapter)
      • Night Life 2013 "Killer Personalities"
      • 7 Teepees
      • Great White Lies San Francisco Premiere
      • SF March Against the Cull
      • Great White Night 2012
      • Night Life 2011
      • Gentlemen's Club
      • Scuba Squad Divers
      • Sharks and Beer
      • Launch Party / Fundraiser
      • Of Whale and Man
    • FALSE CONSERVATION >
      • OCEARCH >
        • OCEARCH OVERVIEW
        • Internal Damage
        • Fin Damage >
          • Frodo's Fin Damage Timeline
        • OCEARCH's Pregnant Shark Not Pregnant
        • Science...without the Science
        • OCEARCH Videos >
          • Sinking Away
          • Not Stressed
          • Charlie Rose 1
          • Dorsal Fin Damage
          • PAT tags VS. SPOT tags
          • Tagging Options
          • Message to Australia
  • Videos
    • Stupid Things People Say About Sharks
    • Racism and Sharks
    • Connection
    • 360s Drones and Sharks
    • Footage Licensing
    • Tiger Shark Vs. Turtle
    • Guadalupe Cage Dive Guide
    • minioncam
    • Guadalupe White Sharks 2018
    • Product Reviews
    • Interviews >
      • Guadalupe 2018 Interview
      • Andre Rerekuru
      • RodneyFox
      • Chris Neff >
        • Cape Cod Cull
      • WalterBernardis
    • SharkMinutes
    • Kid Friendly >
      • Blueprint
    • Feature Films >
      • Monsters >
        • Enterprise Documentary Fund
      • Great White Lies >
        • Film Festivals >
          • Dropbox Links Great White Lies
    • Short Films >
      • Victory Over Sharks
      • Mothers and Children
      • Sentience
      • Elasmo
      • Shark Rescue
      • Balance
      • Shark Affection
      • Purpose
      • To Touch a Killer
      • Swimming In Shark Alley
      • White Shark Behavior: Part 1
      • Connection
      • Farallon Islands
      • Sustainable
      • Fear
    • Quick Bites >
      • Nurse Shark Barbels in Slow Motion
      • Do Sharks Get Cancer?
      • Sydney Harbor Video of White Shark is Fake
      • White Shark Swallows Tuna in One Bite
      • Gentle Biting and Ram Ventilation
      • Hammerhead Love
      • Seal Swims Leisurely Around White Sharks
      • Great White High Five
      • Petting a Nurse Shark
      • White Shark Tail Narrowly Misses Woman
      • Shark Shart ( Great White takes a shit )
      • WSV Preview
    • Elasmo >
      • Elasmo 0
      • Elasmo 1 and 2
      • Elasmo 3
      • Elasmo 3 Short Version
      • Elasmo 4 (Blue Sharks)
      • Elasmo 5 - Great hammerheads
      • White Dream (short)
    • Surf >
      • Surfing With Sharks - Wayne Lynch
      • California >
        • Jetty, Half Moon Bay, 2/16/14
    • The Price of Existence >
      • Criminalizing Natural Behavior
      • Price of Existence Excerpts with Chris Fallows
      • Dr. Neil Hammerschlag Explains Responsible Drum Lining
      • Price of Existence Trailer
      • Global Opposition to the Cull
      • Daniel Wolfe Interview Exerpt
    • Outtakes >
      • Surfer Interview Outtake
      • Avoiding Gansbaai
      • The Bag Boy
    • Samples
    • Videos from Others >
      • Good Vids >
        • White Shark Research in New Zealand
        • The Shark Man (60 Minutes)
        • Baby White Shark Caught
      • Bad Vids >
        • All that is wrong with Discovery wrapped up in one vid
  • Get Involved
    • Guadalupe 2020
    • Recurring Donation
    • Donations
    • Join the Team
    • News Letter Sign Up