I don't have the time to write a posting that sufficiently outlines the plight of sharks and urges you to attend
next week's screening of the important film SHARKWATER. Fortunately, a picture can take the place of me writing 1,000 words:
Now multiply that image a multi-millionfold, and you may begin to wrap your mind (and hopefully your heart) around the scope of the extermination of one of nature's grandest and oldest creatures. Imagine what it must be like for a shark to be pulled out of the water, have its fins sliced off, then thrown back to die a slow death by drowning or being eaten alive. Again, expand your imagination to picture this happening on a scale of millions, and you begin to understand.
What's the industry behind this slaughter like? Apparently it's not unlike the Mafia or a drug cartel. Find out what happened to filmmaker Rob Stewart when he began to scratch the surface and got way more than he bargained for. Find out what's being done to sharks on a global scale before it's too late. Find out, then speak out.
Tickets for
next week's screening of SHARKWATER are running out. Get yours now. We're not urging you for the sake of simply filling a theater. We're imploring you, because we feel this movie is at least as important as
An Inconvenient Truth to anyone who cares at all about the natural world. And the crisis depicted is far more unequivocal than the debate surrounding global warming.
See this film. Save the sharks.
4:30 AM is an ungodly hour. I once had a friend who, when I told him that’s what time I wake up for diving, often expressed shock: “I didn’t know you could GET to 4:30 AM by waking up. I thought you just had to stay up all night until it came to you.”
But, no. Waking up at 4:30 AM is, if not easy, at least possible. Possible, anyway, when you have some reason for doing so and something to look forward to. Be that something an hour drive to the Bel Mar Marina to load 200 lbs of gear onto a boat to ride 4-foot seas for an hour and a half so that you can jump in murky water for a 20-minute dive that incurs 45 minutes decompression time… or if that something is an hour drive to Brooklyn so that you can scrub algae off of some space-age polymer that has been molded to look unsettlingly like coral.
I find both of these ideas enormously appealing. Which is why I woke up at 4:30 AM -- on a Saturday, no less.
Saturday was my first day at the New York Aquarium and it was F-ing great!
Having passed my in-water test (with some difficulty that I’ll address shortly), I was properly invited to and congratulated for becoming part of the Volunteer Dive Team. Though I am somewhat suspicious that this invitation may have been driven by Dive Volunteer Program Coordinator Dick Blankfein’s desire for the free publicity of me rambling to strangers on the internet, I am in no way ungrateful for it. Quite the opposite, I’m currently out of my mind with excitement and expectation. My shoulders also hurt.
There’s something undeniably eerie about public places when they are totally deserted. One can’t help but think of post-apocalyptic scenes from zombie movies. Well, maybe the zombie thing is just me, but you can’t say that there’s anything normal about an empty boardwalk rife with empty arcades. That’s Coney Island at 7:00 AM. The wide aquarium parking lot equally deserted but for a car here and there. Creepy just for a moment, though. I was snapped back to zombie-less reality by a sea lion bark echoing over the tops of the buildings. Sea lions get up early too, evidently. It reminded me that there was life in this quiet, creepy part of the world. Cool life. Cool life that I was going to get to be a part of.
We three candidates for the Team were there earlier than the rest, since we had the opportunity to sign another half-ream of paperwork which, I’m pretty sure, included the term “Indentured Servitude” in no less than eight places. As the rest of the Team showed up, we prepared for the day’s lecture.
As was made clear during the interview, being a volunteer diver for the aquarium is not just about swimming with the pretty fishies. As volunteer divers, the Team is representative of the aquarium itself. Before and/or after working dives, the members of the team walk around the grounds in uniform (or drippy wetsuits) to talk to visitors, answering questions and chatting up little kids in the hopes that those wide-eyed, little kids grow up to be environmentally conscientious adults. OK, I added that last bit myself because it’s not really in the Volunteer Dive Team charter, but sure as shingles it is one of my goals. So, since there are bound to be questions posed of the divers, there are mandatory classes which will equip them with the answers.
It’s good that they’re mandatory, in terms of getting the information to the divers, because I have to report that it was boring as hell. Wait… no… that’s not the word I’m looking for. “Fascinating.” Yeah, that’s the one. “Fascinating as hell.”
After about a decade of watching a nearly unhealthy amount of Animal Planet and Discovery Channel, I learned WAAAY more about sea turtles over the course of two hours on Saturday than I even thought I knew, which is already WAAAY more than I really know. Enough that I can’t even start to relate it here. If you’re that curious (and you should be) go to Wikipedia, sparse of facts though it may be compared to Saturday’s class.
Class dismissed.
Then there was the in-water test in Glover’s Reef (the basketball court-sized reef display right inside the front door). I hadn’t given it any thought beforehand. I’ve been training for my instructor’s certification for a while now and have performed the skills I expected would be part of the test approximately a zillion times for students in the pool already. Naturally, having done these things so many times before, I made a complete ass of myself this time.
The two things I hadn’t counted on:
- Being ridiculously over-weighted so that you can be anchored enough to actually do the work required in the tank.
- Every time I’ve performed the test tasks for Open Water students, it had been in a standard BC rig. Saturday, I was in my usual tech rig and can’t even remember the last time I practiced a ditch-and-don with it.
The overweighting had me rolling around on the bottom like I was a soft ice-cream cone and the bottom was made of Jimmies. The lack of ditch-and-don practice had me tangled in a Gordian knot of my own hoses. Not being one to easily admit shortcomings I’m not going to say anything more on this subject, but to voice my hope that someone reading this was at the aquarium that day and got a picture and can send it to me. I’m guessing it looked funny as hell.
“OK,” said Dick to the two fellas who, having tested before me, were up top, by the side of the pool. “You guys get your gear back on and get in. You,” he pointed at me, “come with me. We’re going to go wave to kids.”
I hadn’t noticed the audience that had accumulated as I was snake-handling my hoses, but they sure as hell noticed us. I ducked back under and made towards the big window of the display. The closer we got, the crazier the platoon of kids outside went. Waving and giggling and screaming with glee so loud I could hear them easily through the inches-thick glass. They held up their hands against the window and would run happily to their friends when I’d put my hand against theirs. When I took my reg out and smiled at them... I only saw two burst into actual flames from the excitement, but I’m sure there were more.
Pretty fish AND frogmen in a tank? I know I must have seen it when I was a kid. There are gauzy memories lurking way in the back rooms of my brain, but nothing concrete. Then there were those kids’ eyes... The wonder and excitement reflected through that glass, studying me as though I was some sort of sea-monster that they’d heard of and were seeing for the very first time. I didn’t have to try to remember what it was like when I’d seen it, because I was looking at it through their eyes.
I’m going to leave it there, for now, and save why my shoulders still hurt for later. I’m already at about triple the word count that Michael and Michael had told me the blog postings should be, there is so much left to say that you couldn’t possibly read it in one sitting without going blind... and besides, I’m going back on Thursday.
I can’t wait.
