Schwadevivre
Antitheist
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2014
- Messages
- 549
- Location
- Near Skinners Bottom
So tigers (kill more people in India than sharks kill in Australia every year), hippos and elephants should not be protected?Why should a shark be treated differently from any other maneater?
The point is the vulnerability species not their capacity to kill. If mackerel were vulnerable then they should not be taken; just as cod were protected in the North Sea, the Grand Banks and round Iceland or tuna are protected in the Mediterranean. You entirely missed my point about the porbeagle, I enjoy eating them but I do not grudge their protected status.
Humans indulging in voluntary activities are free to place themselves in danger from those activities; whether the activity is climbing, cave diving and camera safari or not just swimming or surfing. Swimming and surfing in the ocean places you at risk not just from sharks but also from irukandji, blue ring octopus, stone fish, rip currents, undertows and surf breaks. If you wish to protect humans by culling sharks then you should also cull irukandji, blue ring octopus and stone fish; you should also desire the engineering of designated swimming and surfing beaches by eliminating big breakers, placing sea bed baffles to eliminate undertow and rip currents. Whilst you are at it you might also want to eliminate tides so that kids who indulge in tombstoning don't kill and cripple themselves on the sea floor.
Regarding the value of human life - it is precious to me; but because of that I also value the fact that I and others are free to indulge in risk-taking without some petty minded nanny trying to eliminate that risk. When I briefly indulged in caving (spelunking) I did not expect the crawls to be enlarged or greased or the weather to be engineered to eliminate the risk of underground flooding any more than I wanted there to be steel braces stopping rock falls and airbags at the bottom of vertical descents.
The fact people are ignorant of the risks of their chosen leisure activity is not an excuse to treat those people as toddlers and remove all risk.