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The Full Story

Media, videos, & Art about NZ expedition

This page highlights all the art, Media and Video presentations related to the New Zealand

Great White shark expedition.

Mission

White Shark Cage diving; an ethical conundrum. 

White Shark Cage diving; an ethical conundrum, my reflexive presentation at the Symbiotic Ethics Conference, University of Exeter 2021. White shark cage diving is practiced in 5 places, the newest one being at the very end of South Island, New Zealand, 1600 km from Antarctica. However, this practice raises some ethical conundrums about human interaction with the sharks and its effects on the lives of both species. Based on the first-ever multispecies ethnographic investigation among these two species and various legal, social, economic ideas and beliefs, this article problematizes the ethical considerations related to the practice of cage diving. On one hand, there are claims that it helps demystify the sharks from their monstrous image, at the same time the practice utilizes the same image to promote itself. Furthermore, although there is not much evidence that it alters the behavior of the animals involved, the communities living closest to them fear imminent shark attacks. This in effect has led to a human-animal conflict, where reportedly sharks are being killed because certain groups feel it would keep the sharks and hence the cage diving operators away from their communal waters. Alternatively, the supporters of cage diving claim it helps immediate identification of any illegal shark killing or fishing in the southern waters and argues ‘a live shark is more valuable than a dead one’. Furthermore, I reflect on the act of ethnography among this orchestrated human-shark meeting, where the agency of the sharks is as relevant as the humans to create a successful encounter. While taking verbal and audiovisual documentation of the humans in the practice all permissions and consents are acquired- similarly, should and could there be protocols of acquiring consents from the sharks before their images are captured, and shared- if they are indeed considered to be sentient active actors in the human- shark network of interaction. Situated at the liminality of these ethical conundrums this will be the first multispecies contribution exploring ethics of human and shark interaction on both species.

A chapter reading(Audio recital)

An intimate reading of ethnopoetrical section in my upcoming book- IRIDESCENT SKIN. The first meeting with a female white shark, awaiting my beloved across oceans and millennia.(PLEASE USE HEADPHONES OR GOOD SPEAKERS WHILE WATCHING)

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Drawings inspired by the cage diving experience 

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©2021 by Dr. Raj Sekhar Aich. 

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