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Post by technidiver on Feb 23, 2019 10:28:18 GMT -8
This isn't necessarily vintage diving related but it does involve a man who did more for the animal kingdom and education than most will ever do. Many of us are familiar with that Aussie guy Steve Irwin, the crocodile man. I'm not going to divulge into all that he did, the list is too long. But the animal group PETA didn't like how Google payed homage to the man who cared for all animals, big or small, and tragically lost his life to an accidental stingray sting to the heart. www.peta.org/features/steve-irwin/I don't like how the article goes on to name several others like Jim Fowler as being purely showman and doing next to nothing for nature. As divers we go with the motto leave nothing but bubbles, but occasionally it is educational to have interactions and experiences with wildlife. Like swimming with sharks or dolphins in the wild. It educates us and allows us to have compassion for the species. I don't see how this is terrible or just as bad as slaughtering animals, as PETA would argue. Just my two PSI. PETA has just lost all of my respect. Sorry for the rant. TD |
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Post by SeaRat on Feb 23, 2019 11:25:02 GMT -8
I'll post more on this after reading the link. But realize that most of us who started diving in the 1950s and 1960s started out spearfishing, and turned to photography and wildlife conservation later. Cousteau and Dumas were spearfishermen first, to feed their families during German occupation while in WWII. We would not have the aqualung without the idea that divers could spearfish and supplement their diets with fish from the sea.  Me, spearfishing with the Salem Aqua Club in Hood Canal, Washington during the early 1960s. We had formed a high school club affiliated with this club, which we called the Salem Junior Aqua Club. Now, I'll read the article. John |
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Post by nikeajax on Feb 23, 2019 11:38:40 GMT -8
TD, I have very mixed feelings about Irwin: he was a real whack job and like Grizzly Man: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Manhad a whole lot of fools luck and ran out as it eventually does. Yes, he did educate people, but he did a lot of damage too: people emulating him and getting hurt. Stay away from wild animals: people don't often see that they are harassing them, and fail to see that they themselves react even more aggressively when the tables are turned: we come back and kill them with guns and traps because, "they're a menace and need to be destroyed". As for PETA, they aren't nearly as groovy people believe they are: they are do-gooding-bullies. One of my favorite saying is: the road to hell is paved by good intentions. Their good intentions are self serving and misguided much of the time. They try to protect things like European Starlings and House Sparrows: these two birds just to name a few, are wiping out native species like Western Blue Birds. Did you know the rhyme about, four and twenty black birds baked in a pie... is about cooking Starlings as food? I've always wanted to try them collecting them with this:  But it's always thrilling to see one of my buddies make a meal of them too:   and yes, those are MY photo's!  JB |
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Post by nikeajax on Feb 23, 2019 11:54:24 GMT -8
Before we got married my wife and I went to the Great Smokey Mountains: one of the rangers told us a story of the man who decided he could catch a Timber Rattlesnake with his bare hands: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_rattlesnakeShe said that he told his friends something like, "Stand back, I'm a professional..." The last she saw of him was being taken away in an ambulance and the rotary beacons going on as they drove away. Erwin was always catching snakes with his bare hands... We saw one that was six feet long sunning itself on the trail blocking our path: we tossed very small pebbles at it until it went away. One half was brown and the other half was a very bright green: very beautiful animal that I really didn't want to hurt  JB |
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Post by nikeajax on Feb 23, 2019 18:53:36 GMT -8
Oh, and did you know that PETA decided people didn't think fish weren't cute enough, so they started to call them, are you ready... SEA KITTENS!   JB |
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Post by SeaRat on Feb 23, 2019 19:05:46 GMT -8
Okay, I've read the article, and don't agree with it. I also read about Steve on Wikipedia, and he did quite a lot for conservation, especially for crocodiles. He captured and relocated hundreds of them, and some of them which were endangered ended up on his Australian Zoo. He has a unique record for wildlife rehabilitation, and was a unique figure in advancing understanding of the natural world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_IrwinI applaud Google for doing their doodle to remember Steve Irwin by, and don't think PETA has a leg to stand on this time. Because of this, I'll probably start watching some of Steve's old films. John PS, this little guy doesn't look at all like a kitten to me.  Look, this is a fish. Fish are cold-blooded, and on the zoological hierarchy well down from cats. Kittens are infant cats, and cats are mammals. Mammals are warm-blooded, and in the hierarchy of things, much "higher" than fishes. PETA, what are you thinking? |
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Post by SeaRat on Feb 23, 2019 21:28:15 GMT -8
Okay, I've just about watched this video, titled "Crikey! It's the Irwins" on Animal Planet. For those who feel Steve Irwin did not leave much of a legacy, how about the Austrailian Zoo, with 600 employees and 1,000 acres of land, for raising threatened and endangered species.
John
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Post by technidiver on Feb 24, 2019 21:23:25 GMT -8
Oh, and did you know that PETA decided people didn't think fish weren't cute enough, so they started to call them, are you ready... SEA KITTENS! JB SEA KITTENS??? Oh no, what is this world coming to? Aren't fish a class of their own?? TD |
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Post by scubalawyer on Feb 25, 2019 6:36:25 GMT -8
Oh, and did you know that PETA decided people didn't think fish weren't cute enough, so they started to call them, are you ready... SEA KITTENS! JB I usually cut the tails and heads off the Sea Kittens I shoot through and through with a spear then rip their skin off before frying them in butter. |
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Post by technidiver on Feb 25, 2019 8:38:31 GMT -8
I'd like to think that PETA is to the world what ignorant dive shops are to divers; always present and always annoying. And misinformed too.
TD
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Post by vance on Feb 25, 2019 8:54:16 GMT -8
I learned long ago not to respond to the question "Don't you just love cute little animals?" with "Depends on how they're cooked."
The hard way.
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Post by nikeajax on Feb 25, 2019 9:45:15 GMT -8
I totally agree with what PETA was saying about TV show like Irwin's: they also make a bioligist's job look like nothing but excitement and fun, just like being a rock star. Being a biologists is sorta like being an astronaut: only a very, very small portion is about flying, and very few astronauts get to go into space. Instead, they do lots of paperwork. We need to teach kids it's a really good thing to be smart and think for yourself, and be skeptical, questioning EVERYTHING. Instead, what I see is when a child is crying, what do parents do, hand them a cellphone  They get immediate gratification and stop thinking for themselves.  How many kids know about rain forests and pandas... "Oh yes mummy, we must do everything we can to save them, for I so dearly love them all..." Orgs like PETA make saving the planet sexy, rarely educating people about endangered or threatened things where they live. How many kids know that swamps and bogs are just as important as rain forests: oak-grass lands are just as important as redwoods  JB |
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Post by SeaRat on Feb 25, 2019 10:21:17 GMT -8
I totally agree with what PETA was saying about TV show like Irwin's: they also make a bioligist's job look like nothing but excitement and fun, just like being a rock star. Being a biologists is sorta like being an astronaut: only a very, very small portion is about flying, and very few astronauts get to go into space. Instead, they do lots of paperwork. We need to teach kids it's a really good thing to be smart and think for yourself, and be skeptical, questioning EVERYTHING. Instead, what I see is when a child is crying, what do parents do, hand them a cellphone They get immediate gratification and stop thinking for themselves. How many kids know about rain forests and pandas... "Oh yes mummy, we must do everything we can to save them, for I so dearly love them all..." Orgs like PETA make saving the planet sexy, rarely educating people about endangered or threatened things where they live. How many kids know that swamps and bogs are just as important as rain forests: oak-grass lands are just as important as redwoods JB JB, I can agree with you on this. Science and the entertainment by using wildlife are different. If you watch the video above, you'll see that there is actually a lot of science going on behind the scenes at the Austrailia Zoo. The employ several veterinarians to keep the animals safe, and rehabilitate them. Here at the Oregon Zoo, we have a condor rehab facility, and without that there would be no California condors left in the wild. The same goes for the Australia Zoo. Science is hard. In order to get a study completed, you need to do a lot of work, and a lot of it is boring and dirty. I worked a full summer on a clam bed survey in Oregon estuaries. Here are a few drawings of what we were doing in zero to six foot visibility all day long. I had one dive in Tillomook Bay where I got into contaminated water, and that evening could not figure out which end of me to aim at the toilet. [  We were dredging a one square foot circle down three or so feet, and counting every clam that we got from the beds, sizing them, and our head biologist was compiling that into data on the extent of these clam beds.  But that science needs to be funded, and it was through the State of Oregon. But private funding is what Steve Irwin was doing, and the entertainment and admission prices funded some basic science. John PS, the Photobucket images are not coming through. I had to re-upload them to Flickr to get them to show here. |
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Post by nikeajax on Feb 25, 2019 11:19:07 GMT -8
John, that is why I have mixed feelings about people like Irwin.
The sad part is when groups like the EPA get villainized, then we have to work extra hard trying to protect what's left. We all live in an ecosystem: everything effects everything else around it, the repercussions cascade. Environmentalism made us stop and think about things like lead in gasoline and using DDT as pesticides: we have much cleaner air and water because of it. When was the last time you heard someone complain about fresh air and clean water: I never have!
When we were in Oregon we visited one of the woolen mills: back in the day when they were done using the dies, they'd just dump them in the creek or river totally devastating anything that lived in the creek. This practice now illegal here in the USA, was/is a common practice everywhere in the world.
Now when babies chew on things like their cribs and window sills while teething, there is no long lead in the paint to to damage their systems.
JB
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Post by SeaRat on Feb 25, 2019 11:55:35 GMT -8
JB,
I understand what you are saying, but Steve Irwin does have some written science to his name:
Here's the thing; Steve Irwin was able to use the publicity that he generated to do actual science, and to rehabilitate wildlife. For that, I applaud him and his family (who are carrying on the legacy).
Now, for those who are making villains some of our outstanding agencies like the EPA, that's totally uncalled for. The EPA was set up by President Nixon to protect the general public's health and well-being. Like you said, air pollution was (and still is) a problem. It needs to be monitored. The regulations that were promulgated by EPA, OSHA, MSHA and other agencies are written in blood, the public's blood and worker's blood. These started when we were diving in the early days, with the identification of things like asbestos, benzene, silica dust and radium as cancer-causing agents.
I did a whole presentation an Agent Orange for the First Calvary unit of veterans here in Portland a few years back. The contaminant there was dioxin (technically 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD)). Sometimes what we think are good ideas turn deadly too, and this was one of those cases.
Radium was used on some of the vintage diving gauges, and was hand-painted onto the face of these gauges and watches by young women, who subsequently had dental problems and mouth cancers because of their exposure to radium. The current justification in decreasing regulations has worker's health again at risk. The science on much of this is well-known, but because these are occupational and environmental health problems which take decades to have effects, are being de-emphasized or ignored in favor of quick economic gain. That is the tragedy that is being played out right now.
John
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They get immediate gratification and stop thinking for themselves. 
