Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands

March 15, 2010 10:23 PM

Swimming with Great White sharks Mike Rutzen is an expert on the great white shark and an outspoken champion of shark conservation. His fame spread due to the images of his free diving exploits swimming with the animals without a cage. Mike has spent more time swimming cage-less with great whites than anyone else. He has since travelled the world lecturing on sharks and filming documentaries on them... [More video]

[Original Discover Channel program] Michael Rutzen plunges freely with a great white shark. Rutzen eats, sleeps, breathes and dreams of sharks and is on a one-man crusade to prove that rather than being the crazed man-eater from Jaws they are in fact sociable and approachable creatures to anyone who understands their body language.

posted by KokuRyu (27 comments total)

they are in fact sociable and approachable creatures generally unaware that human beings would make easy prey and therefore approachable to anyone who understands by anyone who has figured out how to manipulate their own body language to keep it that way?
posted by nathancaswell at 10:36 PM on March 15, 2010

fuck! fucked up my formatting. :(
posted by nathancaswell at 10:37 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wasn't there some guy who used to hang out with bears all the time up in Alaska? All it takes is one pissed off hungry one...
posted by Lukenlogs at 10:56 PM on March 15, 2010 [12 favorites]

One of the most memorable experiences of my younger, more adventurous days was diving with hammerheads at a famous seamount off Isla Partida/Espirito Santo many years ago, and even with their (relatively) teeny little mouths, I was more than a little nervous about the whole thing. I can't imagine doing it with Great Whites.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:03 PM on March 15, 2010

I'm going to make my shocked face now so that I'm all ready for when I hear that this guy got eaten.
posted by andoatnp at 11:32 PM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, on MetaFilter...
posted by bicyclefish at 1:25 AM on March 16, 2010

an outspoken champion of shark conservation.

Like that guy in Alaska Lukenlogs mentioned who wanted to "free swim" with Grizzly bears, it seems to me that their outspoken conservation is more a matter of self-indulgence than selfless activism.

I guess the people who champion the cause of wild animals, who work tirelessly to have these animals and their environment left alone and undisturbed by man, and who lead be the example of keeping their human selves out of the environment of wild animals don't make great subjects for TV and film and YouTube.
posted by three blind mice at 1:46 AM on March 16, 2010 [3 favorites]

Rutzen eats, sleeps, breathes and dreams of sharks...

He eats them? Wait, what?
posted by heyho at 2:12 AM on March 16, 2010 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I'm getting Grizzly Man flashbacks here, too. Whatever makes him happy, I guess, but I hope he can remember the limitations of their cross-species connection.
posted by Forktine at 3:10 AM on March 16, 2010

These narratives are essentially romantic, aren't they? I mean there's always a degree of mysticism to them. Some unverifiable connection to the wild animal (broadly speaking: I know what they think) and their environment (broadly speaking: their element is mine) is always made. Rutzen has a great deal of knowledge about sharks, their behaviour and their environment, but like others here have said, it's impossible not to think about Grizzly Man. He may pass as not-food for some time, but he'll have zero control once the shark decides otherwise. Then again, maybe that's what drives him, who knows.
posted by The Mouthchew at 3:31 AM on March 16, 2010 [2 favorites]

Anybody have Werner Herzog's number?
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:41 AM on March 16, 2010 [4 favorites]

I was expecting an obit... wait for it, wait for it... (well, it'll probably take a while, but please - he's swimming with top-predators. And I worry about my kids riding bikes without their helmets...)
posted by From Bklyn at 4:05 AM on March 16, 2010

they are in fact sociable and approachable creatures to anyone who understands their body language

If only baby seals could somehow learn to appear less threatening, great whites would be their best friends!

This reminded me of the Pearls Before Swine strip where Zebra writes the lions a long and eloquent letter asking why lions and herbivores can't get along, only to receive a scribbled three word reply reading simply "We eat you."
posted by tomcooke at 4:25 AM on March 16, 2010 [2 favorites]

Barracuda: 1.8 Meters

Great White Shark: 6 Meters, 2,240 kilograms

...but yeah, other than that
posted by leotrotsky at 5:02 AM on March 16, 2010

on a one-man crusade to prove that rather than being the crazed man-eater from Jaws they are in fact sociable and approachable creatures

Yeah. If everyone who found themselves on a one-man crusade took a few hours to think 'hey, why is nobody else out here with me?', oh so many foolish ideas could be averted.

Worth mentioning, re: Jaws, that the late Peter Benchley himself did a lot of work to promote shark conservation and correct the whole crazed man-eater image after his book was published, and did say he'd never have written it had he known more about sharks at the time. His kind of conservation work still didn't involve rebranding sharks as big aquatic care-bears with fins, though.

(Tangentially - I've just learned through this Benchley obituary that an alternative title suggestion for what became Jaws was 'Wha's That Noshin' On My Laig?'. Awesome.)
posted by Catseye at 5:03 AM on March 16, 2010

This is why sharks are called the "kittens of the sea"!

Super cuddly!
posted by orme at 5:52 AM on March 16, 2010 [4 favorites]

It's my husband's dream to do this.

And it's my dream that he extends his life insurance policy.**

**I keed, I keed
posted by stormpooper at 6:05 AM on March 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

From what I understand, Great Whites attack people on the mistaken first impression that they are seals and sea lions. Often a surfer in a wetsuit, floating on the surface which, from beneath, looks very pinnipeddy.

After the first bite they realize their mistake (whether they think oh pardon me surfer, hate it when this happens is unclear) they move on.

Problem is, the fist bite takes a fairly significant portion of surfer's body, such as an arm, a liver, etc.
posted by Danf at 6:09 AM on March 16, 2010

Somehow I don't think he'd get along with Steve Zissou.
posted by The Thnikkaman at 6:36 AM on March 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

Mike Rutzen is an expert on the great white shark and an outspoken champion of shark conversation.

I had such a hard time with Spanish that I don't think there's any way I could ever learn to speak Shark, plus I don't think I have the right number of rows of teeth. And what do we really gain from conversing with these gentle giants anyway? It's not like we don't already have enough recipes for raw fish, raw seal, raw sea lion, and so forth.

Oh. ConserVAtion. Got it.
posted by komara at 7:05 AM on March 16, 2010 [4 favorites]

I do not understand why people want to give in to the selfishness of wanting to experience interacting with giant wild predators. They cover it over with the gloss of wanting to "help" the animals, but behavior like this is pure thrill-seeking.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:15 AM on March 16, 2010

After the first bite they realize their mistake (whether they think oh pardon me surfer, hate it when this happens is unclear) they move on.

If human infants had multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth, there would be no difference.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:39 AM on March 16, 2010

Barracuda: 1.8 Meters

Great White Shark: 6 Meters, 2,240 kilograms

Years ago Dave Barry wrote a column about a fishing trip with a bunch of fathers and sons. One of them managed to hook a barracuda and while reeling it in, a shark took the opportunity to devour it in full view of everyone on the boat. By the time they got the barracuda hauled in, it was nothing more than a head on a hook.

Feel free to swim with one anytime you like.
posted by tommasz at 8:39 AM on March 16, 2010

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named "The Battle of Waterloo" and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:05 AM on March 16, 2010 [3 favorites]

Killer shark attack in South Africa witnessed on Twitter. This happened two weeks after we went shark cage diving near Cape Town (great whites).
posted by bluesky43 at 11:26 AM on March 16, 2010

F***ING AMAZING. I have always been fascinated by great whites - you know, the whole "ultimate eating machine," the size, the perfection, etc.

Watching these videos, I'm amazed at how my body reacts - almost like seeing a tornado form when living in Oklahoma. The feeling of your heart dropping, the ever-so-slight sense of vertigo, the increased breathing rate. Very visceral to watch.

He may get eaten by one of those sharks, it's true. And of course it's not JUST about "conservation" and education - the guy is obviously a thrillseeker and wants some attention for his exploits. The two angles are not mutually-exclusive.
posted by davidmsc at 11:44 AM on March 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

Danf:
After the first bite they realize their mistake (whether they think oh pardon me surfer, hate it when this happens is unclear) they move on.

Problem is, the fist bite takes a fairly significant portion of surfer's body, such as an arm, a liver, etc.

And this is why most shark bite victims die on land. If Jawsy-wawsy wanted to eat fingerfin you, they'd bloody well succeed most every time.
posted by IAmBroom at 3:22 PM on March 16, 2010