. Medical and Hospital News .




WATER WORLD
From shark dodger to defender: a diver's sea change
by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) March 11, 2013


Once petrified at the thought of a deep-sea encounter with a shark, free-dive champion Pierre Frolla now travels the world to swim with these predators, describing them as majestic and much-maligned.

"As a child, I was terrified of sharks, like many of my generation who grew up with 'Jaws'. Today I am terrified of them disappearing," said the 38-year-old national of Monaco who has become a fierce campaigner for the toothy fish.

Frolla was speaking ahead of a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting that decided in Bangkok on Monday to grant protected status to five shark species threatened with extinction.

About 100 million sharks are killed every year, mainly to meet a craving for shark-fin soup in Asia, and experts say about 30 species are at risk.

Between 1999 and 2004, Frolla was four-time world champion of free-diving, a sport in which competitors seek to dive deepest on a single lungful of air, without any oxygen bottle or other backup.

Frolla recounts how he battled with a phobia which he now considers to have been baseless.

"When I used to take part in free-diving competitions, I was afraid of sharks even though I had never seen one," he said.

This changed in 1999, when he encountered a bull shark during a dive off Reunion island and found it was "a lot more afraid than I was," Frolla told AFP.

And later, he came across an enormous Jaws-style great white in the shark-rich ocean around South Africa -- an animal he found "majestic" and awe-inspiring, the diver said.

Along with training to hold his breath under water, swimming with sharks has become an important part of Frolla's exercise routine.

He helps produce conservation documentaries and to find sharks for scientific research.

So as not to disturb the world's oldest predators, Frolla has strict rules -- no air cylinders and no protective cages.

"With the bottles, one makes bubbles and noise that disturbs the animals and they are more difficult to approach," he explained -- as well as making it harder to move.

And for his own safety, Frolla stays away from brightly-coloured diving suits, never goes down solo, and never turns his back on a shark.

"Sharks are curious, not necessarily very intelligent, but opportunistic," he explains.

Rather than being fearful man-eaters, sharks sometimes mistake humans for their natural prey, like seals or tortoises, and at other times unintentionally hurt surfers as they "mouth" them out of curiosity, say experts.

Activists like Frolla believe movies such as Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster, in which a great white stalks beachgoers at a New England resort, gave the fish an undeserved, murderous rap.

In 2012, 78 shark attacks were reported around the world, of which eight were fatal, "which is far fewer than people who died from bee stings," Frolla told a recent oceanographic conference in Paris.

Sharks are in fact far more threatened by humans than the other way round -- even "Jaws" author Peter Benchley was a campaigner for the animals' protection.

According to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), 90 percent of the world's sharks have disappeared over the past 100 years.

"I see a fewer and fewer sharks in the Mediterranean and on my last visit to New Caledonia I saw none," said Frolla of the diver's paradise in the southwest Pacific. "There has been a big decline since my first visit there 10 years ago."

.


Related Links
Water News - Science, Technology and Politics






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle




Memory Foam Mattress Review

Newsletters :: SpaceDaily Express :: SpaceWar Express :: TerraDaily Express :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

Get Our Free Newsletters
Space - Defense - Environment - Energy - Solar - Nuclear

...





WATER WORLD
How Sensitive are US East Coast Regions May Be to Ocean Acidification
Cape Cod MA (SPX) Mar 11, 2013
A continental-scale chemical survey in the waters of the eastern U.S. and Gulf of Mexico is helping researchers determine how distinct bodies of water will resist changes in acidity. The study, which measures varying levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other forms of carbon in the ocean, was conducted by scientists from 11 institutions across the U.S. and was published in the journal Limnology an ... read more


WATER WORLD
Fukushima victims sue Japan government, TEPCO

British business backs PM's foreign aid pledge

NASA Wallops Recovery Continues from Hurricane Sandy

Two years on, Fukushima suffers in nuclear shadow

WATER WORLD
China targeting navigation system's global coverage by 2020

Russian GLONASS space satellite group again at full strength

Tracking trains with satellite precision

USAF Awards Lockheed Martin Contracts to Begin Work on Next Set of GPS III Satellites

WATER WORLD
New study validates longevity pathway

Siberian fossil revealed to be one of the oldest known domestic dogs

Kirk, Spock together: Putting emotion, logic into computational words

After the human genome project: The human microbiome project

WATER WORLD
New report confirms almost half of Africa's lions facing extinction

For a little-known primate, a new understanding of why females outlive males

Lizards facing mass extinction

Three man-eating lions killed in Zimbabwe

WATER WORLD
Myanmar shelter offers refuge for HIV patients

Daily-dose HIV prevention fails for African women: study

HIV 'cure' in infancy, caution experts

Cambodia orders action to stop deadly bird flu

WATER WORLD
Petitioners seek rights as China parliament meets

Award-winning Tibetan writer denied China passport

Anger over attack on Hong Kong journalists in China

Tibetan self-immolators inspire Chinese painter

WATER WORLD
US court convicts Somali pirates in navy ship attack

Ukraine to join NATO anti-piracy mission

16 gunmen killed in Thai military base attack: army

Japan police arrest mobster in Fukushima clean-up

WATER WORLD
Walker's World: Euro crisis returns

S. America at risk from slow growth: Fitch

Australian central bank computers hacked

China says bank lending shrank in February




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2012 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement