Predator Scorecard: Sharks: 7, Humans: 50-100 Million | Mickey Z.

Photo credit: Mickey Z.

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

Feb. 28, 2013

“Our human blind spot is how we treat animals, and by extension, our only home: planet earth.”

- Sue Coe

It’s the type of story the mainstream media just can’t resist: “Large shark kills man in New Zealand; beach closed” (Associated Press, Feb. 27, 2013).

It’s also a valuable teaching moment, re: speciesism, social conditioning, and corporate propaganda.

So, let’s break it down, shall we?

“Potentially lethal species”
After the Auckland, New Zealand dateline, we’re immediately informed by the Associated Press (AP): A shark possibly 14 feet (four meters) long killed a swimmer near a popular New Zealand beach on Wednesday, then disappeared after police attempting to save the man fired gunshots at the enormous predator.

MZ: Even after all these years, it remains fascinating to witness the post-Jaws shark size fetish (including the article’s title). But why would a journliast report the fish’s size when a) it’s not accurately known and b) it’s only relevant to those drooling over hyperbole like “enormous predator?" Cops firing weapons at a fish, however, does not warrant any use of the term “predator.”

AP: Muriwai Beach near Auckland was closed after the fatal attack, one of only about a dozen in New Zealand in the past 180 years.

MZ: A crucial jolt of reality (shark attacks are rare in New Zealand) is effectively buried beneath the words “fatal attack” and another Jaws-inspired favorite: a beach closing (also mentioned in the article title). Of course, beaches are regularly closed thanks to an enormous predator called corporate pollution -- e.g. in 2011, beach closing and advisory days for U.S. beaches totaled 23,481 days -- but that’s lackluster when compared with four-meter-long predators, right?

AP: Pio Mose, who was fishing at the beach, told the Herald he saw the swimmer struggle against the huge shark. He told the man to swim to the rocks, but it was too late.

MZ: Again: “huge.” Also, as a witness to a sentient being attacked, killed, and partially eaten, we get to hear from some guy in the midst of attacking and killing sentient beings with the intention of partially eating them.

AP: "All of a sudden there was blood everywhere," Mose said. "I was shaking, scared, panicked."

MZ: He means “human blood,” of course, and I guess it’s wasn’t newsworthy to report that the fisherman’s victims were also surely “shaking, scared, panicked.”

AP: Police did not say what species of shark was involved in the attack. Clinton Duffy, a shark expert with the Department of Conservation, said New Zealand is a hotspot for great white sharks, and other potentially lethal species also inhabit the waters.

MZ: Did someone say “lethal species”? More than 40 percent of the world's oceans are heavily impacted by human activities with few areas -- if any -- left unaffected by anthropogenic factors. Thanks to Homo sapiens, we have overfishing, ocean acidification, bottom trawling, offshore drilling, oil spills and slicks, beach erosion, the fact that the world's largest landfill happens to be floating in the Pacific Ocean, etc. etc. etc. (Not just lethal, but suicidal as 80 percent of all life on earth is found in the oceans -- where over half our oxygen is created.)

AP: Attacks are rare. Duffy estimated that only 12 to 14 people have been killed by sharks in New Zealand since record keeping began in the 1830s.

MZ: 14 people killed over the course of 180 years? Finally, we learn the most important fact pertaining to the fictitious threat posed by sharks to humans in New Zealand -- long after most folks stopped reading and began sharing the latest gory “shark attack” tale via social media.

AP: Around the world, sharks attacked humans 80 times last year, and seven people were killed.

MZ: Seven humans killed by sharks last year.

Meanwhile, an estimated 50 to 100 million sharks are murdered by humans each and every year -- sometimes as unintended “bycatch.”

This huge and enormous number cannot fully or accurately calculate the untold millions of sharks targeted each year for their fins -- a practice that involves catching sharks, cutting off their fins while they are alive, and tossing the maimed fish back into the ocean. The fins are dried and used in shark fin soup.

To make this even more despicable, the shark fins don't add flavor to the soup. They are added solely for texture.

Did someone say “lethal species?”

Extinction is forever
Whether you label them liberal or conservative, most major media outlets are large corporations owned by or aligned with even larger corporations, and they share a common purpose: to sell a product (an affluent audience) to a given market: advertisers.

Therefore, we shouldn’t find it too shocking that the image of the world being presented by a corporate-owned press very much reflects the biased interests of the elite players involved in this sordid little love triangle.

Translation: It’s the corporate media’s role to obscure the truth about a planetary culture that must be dismantled before there's no one left to dismantle it.

Reality: It's not some unstoppable force of nature or preordained theology that 90 percent of the large fish -- e.g. tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, halibut, skate, and flounder -- are already gone. Human decisions (e.g. large-scale industrial fishing methods introduced in the 1950s) have led us to where we are now and different human decisions are needed ASAP to forge a more logical and compassionate path.

More than 200 million years before the dinosaurs, there were sharks.

Do we really want to be part of the species that wiped them out?

#shifthappens

NYC Event Note: To continue conversations like this, come see Mickey Z. in person March 19 in NYC for Occupy for All Species: Social Justice in the Age of Climate Change.

Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.

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