Day II at the SF Ocean Film Festival (SFOFF) was the first real endurance test of how long I could remain seated and un-fidgety before my defective spine reminded me it doesn't like long jags of sitting upright. Despite the not very comfy seating at Cowell Theater, our hosts for the film fest, the day really seemed to fly.I'll cut right to the chase to highlight the early afternoon block of shark-themed films that was the most highly anticipated session of the day. I noticed that I was not alone in wanting to get my shark fix on. The line for tickets extended out of the building and into the parking lot. We do indeed love our sharks. With a weekend pass around my neck, I flew past the throngs and into the theater. The session was not just standing room only, it was sold out.
The session featured a block of four shark films. First up, a one minute PSA, Rethink the Shark, by Erica Brumage of South Africa produced for the Save Our Seas Foundation. I appreciated the humor and homage to Jaws:
Next was a 20 minute piece, The Man in the Grey Suit, a film about Great White sharks by film-maker Roger Teich and local diving legend Ron Elliott. Depending upon how you look at him, Ron Elliott is either a fearless pioneer or a reckless nut. For the past 15 years, Ron has been diving for sea urchins in the waters off the Farallone Islands, about 20 miles west of San Francisco. The Farallones are home to a resident population of humongous Great White's that feed on the abundant seals and sea lions there.
Ron never uses a cage, dives with a tankless, hookah air delivery system, and usually dives alone in the murky, icy waters around the Farallones. He recently rigged an underwater video camera to his air hose (called "hose cam") to record his activities. The results are chilling. In one scene, we see Ron exploring along a rocky reef in about 60 feet of water when suddenly a Great White (easily 15 feet in length) dissolves into view about a meter in front of him. Simply amazing.
What's the metric by which you decide whether someone is a "pioneer" or merely "reckless"? Daring or foolish? Or can you (must you?) be a bit of each? If so, Elliott definitely fills those shoes. The images of enormous sharks interacting with a cageless diver was both unnerving and awe-inspiring at the same time.
"The Man in the Grey Suit" is surfer slang for "shark," and the eponomously named film also featured several scenes of Great White shark attacks from the point of view of a surboard. Local shark researcher Scot Anderson fixed a video camera to the underside of a surfboard which he then floated offshore from the Farallones. The segments depicting huge White sharks rocketing from the depths, mouths open, to strike the surfboard-camera rig had more than a few viewers gasp. If the point of the film was to assuage concerns over the relative dangers from shark attack, my sense is that these aren't the sorts of images you want to use.
The third selection of the shark film block, The City of the Shark, was essentially a 14 minute advertisement for the Aquarium of the Bay, a Fisherman's Wharf tourist trap. Beyond that, it focused mostly on the resident sharks of San Francisco Bay, notably the depleted populations of Seven-Gill sharks.
The feature film of the shark session was the 50 minute Great White Shark – A Living Legend, by filmmaker Joe Kennedy. The film takes us to the coast of South Africa to meet self-trained shark researcher Mike Rutzen and learn about his fascination with Tommy sharks, the local name for Great White sharks.
Tommy sharks received their name after the Birkenhead, a ship crowded with British soldiers (Tommies) that sank one night in 1852 after hitting a submerged rocky reef off Gansbaai, South Africa. Of the 638 passengers aboard, only 445 survived. While the frigid waters likely claimed most of the lives, survivors told grim stories of huge sharks attacking both the soldiers as they swam for shore. Coincidentally, the Birkenhead disaster marked the first use of the saying women and children first which would later be called the Birkenhead Drill.
The filmmakers accompany Rutzen as he takes a page from Ron Elliott and free-dives (no cage, no Scuba, only mask, fins, and snorkel) with enormous Great White sharks near his home in South Africa. I can't deny the visual impact of seeing a man dwarfed in open water by predators. A Living Legend tells a compelling story of a man whose interest in sharks have taken him to the extreme. But my eyes start rolling when I hear his supporters in the film dismiss his undeniably risky, even dangerous behavior as "a voyage of discovery." And I suppose it's the scientist in me that can't get past the rush to interpret shark behavior on limited evidence.
There was a lot of "the shark is thinking this" and "Great White's see me as that". I appreciate the patterns in behavior Rutzen may have gleaned from his experiences in South Africa. But drawing conclusions as some sort of empirical rule is not only hasty but potentially dangerous to him and other shark observers around the world who might want to replicate his results. It's the sort of false security based on limited understanding that also led to the completely unnecessary deaths of Grizzly bear researcher Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard when they were attacked, killed, and partially eaten by a bear in Alaska in 2003.
The final film of the session, Sharks in Deep Trouble, was a 20 minute film by Lesley Rochat of South Africa. The film showcased the ongoing problem of shark overfishing, in particular the wasteful practice of finning, where sharks are harvested only for their fins to supply the growing shark fin soup demand.
The film focused on efforts to manage shark fisheries in South Africa and detailed the now familiar disconnects between government management limitations, lack of enforcement, economic realities of fishers, and incomplete understanding of the full role of sharks in ocean ecosystem stability.
During a panel discussion after the film, John McCosker, Senior Scientist and Chair of the Department of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Sciences (and living legend in White shark behavioral ecology) commented that he was delighted to see such an interest in sharks at the film festival. But he made a point, and I have to agree, that we need a new communications paradigm for telling the story that sharks need our protection. Our current efforts are failing. McCosker used the example that just a few blocks away from the theater, anyone could find shop after shop in SF Chinatown selling barrels of dried shark fins.
Every year, it seems, is yet another film depicting the cruel and grisly practice of shark finning. Yet the shark fin soup biz is booming. The messages targeting a predominately Western audience are not translating into pressure on Asian markets where the soup is mostly in demand. Nor is there appreciably increased enforcement of fisheries regulations.
It will be interesting to see whether McCosker's challenge is picked up by next year's filmmakers.
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