a fair deal for the sharks

I had an irate phone call the other day from the HKSPCtC (Hong Kong Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Celebrities). They thought that voting the sharks out of the marine park could be viewed as cruelty to their clients. I asked them who had authorized them to represent the sharks (sharks aren’t known for picking up the phone and anyway the reception is lousy in Hoi Ha Wan). The agent assured me that the HKSPCtC had taken up the case after receiving a call from a certain Mr Spielberger. Anyway, we reached a compromise: we could vote the sharks out of the marine park provided they received tons more media attention, a free holiday (Club Med somewhere) and that they would be allowed to sneak back into Hoi Ha Wan two weeks later to show off their suntans.

Vote the sharks out of the marine park

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but if the sharks in Hoi Ha Wan are only minor celebrity sharks, then it should be easy enough to encourage them into appearing on a reality TV show. Then we can simply vote them out of the marine park! We'll also need volunteers to go and tell the sharks that they've been voted out...

Sharks continued

The sharks are still in Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park according to a small army of shark watchers that AFCD (the government department responsible for very scary shark stories) have employed. It's good to know that the park has enough fish to support a top predator or two, but I can't help wondering if these are ordinary reef sharks or a new species, one considerably more at home with newspapers, TV cameras and hordes of people trying to get a glimpse of them. Looking at the profile, these must be 'celebrity sharks'. They're probably waiting for a TV producer to come up with the right kind of deal: a spot on 'Big Brother' or 'Survivor' perhaps. Maybe it's not a bad idea as I'm sure it would be good for viewing figures.

In a separate drama at the Marine Life Centre yesterday, the very capable computer doctor Keith Chan and myself battled to save the life of the old bomb detector PC (actually, it was brand new in December 2006!). However we failed. The fresh sea air of Hoi Ha Wan may be good for us biological machines, but the salt spray is murder on electronics. Parts of the computer frame were a little rusty and we suspect that the motherboard may have been fatally corroded. We were considering a burial for the old computer at sea with full honours, however being a green organization we can't do that! Anyway, as those in HK may remember with pictures in the newspapers of the beach at Tai Long Wan covered in computer monitors, there is far too much electronics waste in the sea in this part of the world.

Sharks in Hoi Ha Wan

For those of you outside of Hong Kong, you may not know that two sharks have been sited at Hoi Ha Wan in the last few weeks. The media has gone bananas about them, and government has closed the bay to swimming, diving and other water sports. The sharks are around 1 meter (3 feet) in length and are thought to be juvenile black tip reef sharks.

Anyway we postponed today's dive to place the metal frame of the blast detector in its new location at the centre. Clement and Tasha sighted a shark as you can see, but didn't seem too worried about it.