thesharkcon.com

thesharkcon.com has had a major face lift. This includes a different layout as well as some new photos that should hopefully be updated regularly.

Solstice Universal Film Festival and Market

We've just received word that "The Shark Con" has been accepted to the Solstice Universal Film Festival and Market. More details coming soon.

CineSol Film Festival

We are proud to announce that "The Shark Con" will play at the 2010 CineSol Film Festival in September. We will update as we get more info.

Sunscreen Film Festival

We had a great time at the Sunscreen Film Festival. We had a good turnout at the screening, met a lot of really great people (The crew from "Sneakers and Soul" was awesome), and learned a lot about the current state of film industry.

Sunscreen does a really nice job of bringing in big names from the industry that are knee deep in filmmaking. These are the guys on the front line that know what needs to be done to survive. It was very inspirational as well as eye opening.

All in all, Sunscreen Film Festival is an excellent festival and we will surely be back again.

MAN KILLS SHARK WITH BARE HANDS!

What's interesting to me about this, is how they mention that the white sharks are plentiful and huge there (wherever they are), so they are going to kill one with their bare hands. I'm curious if the conservationists are going to say anything about this. MTV is a huge entity, this could definitely undermine years of hard work.

Sunscreen Film Festival

The Shark Con to Play at the Sunscreen Film Festival at 7:15 pm on Saturday, April 17th 2010 at the Muvico Theater in St. Petersburg, FL. The Shark Con team will be there, please stop by and say hi!

The Shark Con to win Remi Award

We're proud to announce that The Shark Con will receive a Remi Award at the WorldFest Houston Film Festival on April 17th 2010.

Lake Arrowhead Film Festival

Saturday, April 24th 2010 at 9:00 p.m. The Shark Con to Play at the Lake Arrowhead Film Festival at 9:00 pm on Saturday, April 24th 2010 at the Evergreen Theater in Lake Arrowhead CA. For those in the area we hope you can make it.

LLV Film Festival

Saturday, April 10th 2010 at 10:00 a.m. The Shark Con to Play at the LLV Film Festival on Saturday, April 10th 2010 at Mitchell College , New London, CT

Director of "The Cove" Has Done it Again

Well, as it turns out, two animal rights activists who worked with Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove, have uncovered a secret in Los Angeles. The Hump restaurant and sushi chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto were charged with illegally selling Sei whale meat, a species believed to be endangered.

In October, animal rights activist Crystal Galbraith and a friend of hers who spoke fluent Japanese spent over $600, eating increasingly exotic dishes to gain the confidence of the waiters and chef.

“It was heartbreaking to eat an endangered animal, but I knew that I was doing it to save the whales,” said Galbraith, a vegan. “We were there eating for four hours. I felt so full and sick.”
Psihoyos helped Galbraith record the meal with a camera and microphone. Along with filming, they also took a sample of the meat. Psihoyos then took their findings to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which started an investigation.

In February, Galbraith returned three more times to The Hump with NOAA agents now watching Yamamoto’s every move.

According to an affidavit in the case, restaurant staff suggested the whale meat had come from a Mercedes parked behind the restaurant.

The illegal sale of a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose, a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum statutory penalty of one year in federal prison and a maximum fine of $100,000 for an individual and $200,000 for an organization.

My favorite part of this whole story is how American vegans have eaten illegal, exotic meat that probably 99% of the US has never even seen. They’re like undercover narcotics agents who use to get closer to their mark.

Either way all of this press brought me to an article written by Dyske Suematsu, an Asian who has been living in America for the past 15 years. He did a write-up about The Cove from a not-really-Asian-not-really-American stand point. I found it quite interesting and thought I’d pass it along.

The Cove - The Unfortunate War Continues

Shark Finning

One of the controversies that almost started up immediately was that The Shark Con was in favor of the finning of live sharks. It took us by surprise at first, as we tried to understand where these statements were coming from. Not more than a day or two after the first trailer was released did blogs start popping up saying we supported shark finning. As always, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the rumors began flying.

All that we could come up with that would justify where these comments were coming from stemmed from a half a second shot in the first trailer. At approximately 1:48-1:49 in the trailer there is a shot of a shark being thrown overboard. At a glance it could look like a finned shark. But if you look closely you’ll see that that particular shark has all of its fins intact. This boat was right next to shore and they were unloading their days catch and getting them ready for transport.

The issue here isn’t if you are for or against shark fishing. The issue lies in the fact that we do not support the finning of live sharks and neither did any of the people we interviewed.

This film isn’t anti-conservation, it’s pro truth.

Why We Didn't Include Shark Attacks

When we first set out to make The Shark Con, it really was just about finding what was behind the entire shark situation. In the last couple of years the eco-films have had a slew of one-sided green movies and we wanted to know what was going on with the other side. This as you can imagine has caused a bit of an uproar, but we still stand behind our decision. Through the course of our interviews we learned quite a lot (from both sides of the issue) and we felt the information trumped the sex appeal of shark attacks.

Shark attacks are easily why people believe sharks sell. We briefly spoke with George Burgess of the International Shark Attack File, about said attacks, but quickly moved on to what we thought were more pressing issues. As it turned out (and no surprise to us) other people we interviewed were very much against the International Shark Attack File and felt that it’s interpretation of unprovoked vs. provoked attacks was only used to help keep the shark as a charismatic species.

All in all some of our sources briefly mention shark attacks but not once do we really explore them in depth. Shark Week has done a fine job of that for years and we feel that they can keep up their good work without us getting in their way.

CITES Convention 2010

The 2010 CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Convention begins in less than four days and it looks like it’s going to be a busy two weeks. Along with the other nominees (and probably soon to be inductees), this year eight species of sharks have been proposed to establish Cites protection; that is the most sharks ever considered at one time. The species of sharks in question are as follows:

Scalloped Hamerhead
Great Hammerhead
Smooth Hammerhead
Sandbar Shark
Dusky Shark
Oceanic Whitetip
Porbeagle
Spiny Dogfish

Many NGO’s should be there lobbying for their particular species (or maybe all of them) and it will be quite interesting to see what nominated species will get on the CITES appendices. And the Oscar goes to…

Another Look at Shark Assessments

An email directed us to a forum discussing the ESPN write-up and an interesting perspective on shark assessments.

Johnoly says:
“The great debate depends on a whether you are talking about a global census versus a particular dive site census.

We have sites in Jupiter that are 100% guaranteed to be loaded with sharks and other sites that I would be shocked if I even saw a single one.

In both cases, no one with the exception of reef.org has been underwater to take a census of how many there are. They are only counting dead fish/sharks.

What if we determined our human populations by how many dead people show up to the cemetery each year? In other words, more dead people means less alive humans and the population must have gone down. Sounds reasonable? Probably not, but that's how the eco groups determine the fish populations.”

The link to this thread can be found here.

What do you think?

The Shark Con Trailer #2

The second trailer for the highly controversial documentary The Shark Con has been released. Remember, ...it's only business.

The Shark Con Review

James Swan, an ESPN Outdoors columnist, has written a review for The Shark Con.

Click to Read Review