Sunday, May 12, 2013

Shark Conservation and the Holocaust?

Total baloney - and Jupp's totally agrees! Source

Wow.
Out of the blue, Josef Freiherr von Kerckerinck zur Borg has just seen it fit to post a comment on an old post about the Phytoplankton nonsense.

Normally, I wouldn't bother.
Europe is awash in pompous Niederadel, a dime a dozen, and one more messianic Hainarr who has done some Shark dives and now believes that he knows something about something is neither here nor there, totally irrelevant. But Jupp is of course the President of the SRI, and as such, their BS and his assorted platitudes are being regularly  mentioned on this blog, inevitably not in a flattering way.

Case in point, his revamped website.
The Phytoplankton reference is thankfully gone, along with the laudatio of his friend and guru Erich Ritter.
Instead, immer schön frei nach dem Motto I am not a scientist nor am I claiming to be one; but I am not stupid either, we find pearls of erudition like
By the year 2017 nearly 100 of the approximately 500 species of sharks will have been extinct. In the eyes of many scientists, the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is already biologically extinct.
And we learn that
They keep water-birds (!!!) and seals (!!!) at viable numbers, that coral reefs without reef sharks will die within one year (repeated in this recent and otherwise charming interview on German television), and that if we humans continue to destroy this controlling factor in the ocean, we will eventually create the largest ecological disaster in the history of mankind - see Ritter here. Yes that would be Shark fishing - not climate change, habitat degradation and pollution!
Whatever - as I said, it's all rather irrelevant.

But this I believe is egregious.
This is the comment by the president of the SRI, re-posted in its entirely lest it gets "accidentally" deleted.
Mike Neumann is a very mean person and a bloody liar. Quoting things out of context, to make me look bad; quoting things I might have said years ago, when I had little or no knowledge about the ocean and the sharks, is typical for him. I don’t believe that I ever used the words he is putting into my mouth.

Maybe he just does not like me because I am a German and he is still living in the bad days of the 1930s. But even in that case he is wrong again. I was a baby then and my mother spoke out publicly against the Nazis. She was even taken to court a few times because of it. Do you, Mr. Neumann, believe in public guilt? So did they.

Now you are trying to make me look like an idiot in order to make yourself look like a hero; or like the self-righteous super brain of all experts on the ocean and the sharks. Mike, I am sure that you are a smart person, who has a very good way with words, much better than I do. However, it is obvious that it does not help you to get over your inferiority complex. Think about it and leave me alone.
No I'm not gonna elaborate.
I trust that everybody understands exactly what's going on here. Thankfully, far from being representative for the Germans, people like that are very much the minority - and time is ticking.

In diesem Sinne.

5 comments:

OfficetoOcean said...

That is certifiably bonkers :-0

Douglas Seifert, Arbiter of the Just said...

It is certainly pretty obvious that Herr Jupp Kerckerinck is out of his depth, which obviously begins at the toe in the water level.

Anyone who takes on the office of president of an alleged scientific research organization and then attempts to deflect criticism of his own mispronouncements because of "quoting things I might have said years ago, when I had little or no knowledge about the ocean and the sharks" does not demonstrate that he (Herr Kerckerinck) has had any further education about the ocean or sharks (or, frankly, anything) and really has more ego than intelligence.

This is the lamentable outcome when questionable organizations rely upon the expertise of pseudo-scientists, like the infamous Swiss Lake Perch specialist and gullible German shark-dive tourism hustler.

jsd said...

Now Douglas, I won't have you slamming SRI and its prestigious President.

SRI stands for Shark Research Institute so it is a research institute studying sharks, right? There has to be a great big scientific institute. You know the sort of place: boffins in white coats, laboratories, desks, offices with 'Professor This' and 'Doctor That' on the doors, a prestigious track record of publishing scientific papers, Ralph Collier explaining that a white shark devoured a human because Venus was on the cusp in the third house of Aries as a whitetip reef shark was hand fed a sardine in Tonga on Tuesday, nearby the dastardly Dr Ritter gazing over a saucepan filled with radioactive shark parts and muttering profoundly 'There are no such things as shark attacks, just shark accidents' before accidentally drinking the radioactive gloop and accidentally proving his theory is utter bollocks, and then lying about it afterwards. -- Precisely the sort of place infiltrated by James Bond in Diamonds are Forever when he is checking the radiation shields before he steals the moon buggy:

James Bond infiltrating SRI

and


James Bond stealing Dr Ritter's outer space shark research vehicle

And where, you ask, could this prodigious scientific research organisation be? Well, at Princeton University of course -- it says so on the SRI website (or rather, implies it). I went looking for SRI last week at Princeton University. I tell you I had a hell of a job.

I found the Princeton cheerleaders.


I found the Princeton women's hockey team.


I found the Princeton women's swimming team.

...And then I got thrown out of Princeton University.

But no SRI!!!

So I went searching through the town. I tell you there was a moment my pulse quickened: I thought I had found SRI!!!

But nope.

... Then I had a moment of inspiration. You know that famous song stunningly recorded by SRI's Italy/Adriatic shark attack (sorry, accident) expert???

This one.

I took myself off to the Princeton record shop and asked if they had the record given that it was recorded by a local boy.

They said no so I updated my Barry Manilow collection instead.

I walked the streets of Princeton for hours. You know that Bob Hope film Son of Paleface where he graduated from Harvard and wore an H on all his clothes to announce the fact...

Bob Hope -- Harvard Graduate

...Well, I thought sooner of later I just had to find students -- bright students -- walking through the town wearing SRI on their clothing. But nope again.

Finally, finally, finally, I was directed to the Shark Research Institute founded at Princeton:-

Eureka!






















Of course when I received an out-of-the-blue ranting email from Jupp ALL IN CAPITALS!!! not so long ago about my daring to criticise SRI's Marie Levine (Jupp's boss) I made these points (that I have also made to Ms Levine) and suggested they stop misleading the public with their claims. Nothing changed. SRI is still the same post office box selling ecotourism trips.

jsd said...

I was contacted by a dive journalist this morning who had read this blog and the comments and appreciated the information -- previously he had thought that SRI = Dr Gruber's Bimini Biological Field Station and was grateful for the clarification. Ye Gods! You might as well compare my tennis with Roger Federer's -- except that I don't get upset when the truth is pointed out (I would thrash Federer every time).

So keep up the good work, Mike.

DaShark said...

Doug's and your comments are actually longer than my original post - so the kudos are owed to you guys, not me! :)