Not proud, just totally amazed...

Wolfie just turned two, and he is already quite proficient handling his grandmother's I-Pad. But it's not only downloading the stuff he likes, such as melodious alphabet songs and learning all about shapes (including decagons); he also discovered the joy of taking photographs.

 

Here the first image little Wolfgang has ever taken of himself with his Opa.

 

 

Brilliant - what else can I, or you, say??......

 

 

Shark Photography - It Never Gets Boring...

... unless you settle with the mediocre stuff.

Wanna improve your skills?  Easy - never stop practicing, and, more importantly, never be fully satisfied with your results.

Here is an article you might find interesting.

I wish you fabulous shark dives with 'big ones'....   :-)

 

Galapagos Sharks, Galapagos Islands (2001)

Photo: Wolfgang Leander

Blackfish - Must See Movie

If there is one movie you watch this summer (what is left of it) go see Blackfish.  I just saw it today and it definitely struck a chord.  Many people know about the inhumanity of keeping orcas captive - this documentary focuses on the psychological effects it has on these highly intelligent and sensitive animals.

What hit me the most was the story of one of the boat drivers that captured orca calves in the 70s (sanctioned by Sea World)...he basically broke it down to kidnapping children from a family.  Now Sea World breeds the whales and separates them from their mothers at an earlier age.  In the wild, orcas never leave their mothers pod.

Watch the movie, and do not go to any more orca shows...

Ila France Porcher on this year's "Shark Week" by the Discovery Channel.

It's going to be the same old sh...t - pardon me: I mean the same old story. Ila France Porcher - an accomplished shark ethologist, author*), relentless conservationist - has posted on her blogspot a disturbing "Shark Week" preview that shows how the Discovery Channel (DC) people keep riding the "Jaws" wave in a most shameless manner.

The trailer features "Emma", probably the most popular tiger shark world-wide, as a "monster shark" being abused by some moronic DC people. Just to watch, and listen to,   that primitive tatooed guy who 'wrangles' "Emma" is sickening...

14 ft "Emma" is one of the most gentle sharks I have ever encountered. Everybody who knows her loves her. To abuse "Emma" and her gentleness is as perfidious as only humans are capable of being.

http://boycottsharkweek.blogspot.ca/2013/08/discoverys-shark-week-abuses-emma-tiger.html 

Divers kneeling in front of "Emma" -  that's the way to treat a dignified lady!!  :-)

Photograph: Wolfgang Leander (2009)

Click to enlarge

OK, as many people say, the "Shark Week" executives offer entertainment, and are not out to educate their viewers as an TV enterprise like PBS would. Fair enough. Yet, it is still deplorable to see again and again that their only objective is to 'sell' sharks as extremely dangerous animals. 

Shark divers know that sharks are NOT dangerous per se, not even the maligned Great Whites, tigers, and bulls which some 'experts' refer to as the 'most dangerous' sharks.

When you enter the ocean you just have to be circumspect and apply common sense. Swimming, diving or surfing in murky waters where sharks are known to be is simply foolish - if attacks occur under such circumstances it's not the sharks that should be blamed. However, "Shark Week" always blames the sharks, explicitly or implicitly. That's their business, that's how they make money. It's as simple as that.

Personally, I do not believe that the DC people will ever change their 'mission statement' which is to engross, and scare, the masses. So, I wont bother writing them letters of protest or even boycott the show. No, I will watch this year's "Shark Week" if I can. Just to see once again what a wretched lot we humans sometimes are...  :-)


*) http://fleander.blogspot.com/2011/02/ethologist-ila-france-porcher-sharks.html

Hans Hass (1924 - 2013)

Professor Dr. Hans Hass 

A few days ago I read that Hans Hass died on June 16, 2013.  As if I had a premonition about one week before his death I thought about him, and what he meant to me. Looking back at my "career" as a skin-diver / free-diver, I owe him my life-long passion for the ocean and its most fascinating creatures: Sharks. 

Hans Hass was the first diver to swim with sharks and study their behavior. He saw them in the Caribbean (Bonaire, 1939) for the first time while spear-fishing. Bold as he and his diving buddies Alfred von Wurzian and Joerg Boehler were, they would see sharks, mostly Caribbean reef sharks, regularly as soon as they had a fish on their primitive pole-spears. 

I have to explain: These 2m long wooden spears had no propulsion devices such as rubbers, springs or compressed air but had to be thrusted by hand - now, THAT was a chivalrous way to hunt, quite unlike today's spearos who use extremely powerful spear-guns which give the fish hardly any chance to avoid being impaled.

Hans Hass with a speared nurse shark (Bonaire, 1939). Now, wait a second, and don't get upset!! - virtually all divers who started to dive in the forties and fifties were enthusiastic spear-fishermen, and they hunted, me included, everything that moved. Back then, the words "ecology" and "environment" were unknown...  :-)

I was eleven years old when my father gave me the book Hans Hass wrote about his Caribbean diving adventures in 1939, "Unter Korallen und Haien" ("Among Corals and Sharks"). I still have the book, and it gives me much nostalgic pleasure to leaf through it once in a while, and marvel at the photographs. At that time, not being too critical as far as literature was concerned, I thought Hans Hass was a brilliant story-teller; later, as an adult, I realized that while he had an astonishingly charismatic personality, he wasn't such a gifted writer. 

However, who cared? 

With his incredible underwater stories, especially the ones about the awesome encounters he had with sharks, and his fantastic black + white photographs taken with an semi-automatic Robot 24x24 mm which was protected by a very basic housing he made himself with the help of a mechanic,  Hans Hass was able to captivate not just a few youngsters but a whole generation of adventure-minded youths in Germany, Austria, and beyond. 

To countless adolescents, Hans Hass was their larger than life hero; he certainly was mine. He was the diving pioneer who introduced us all to the hitherto unknown wonders of the underwater world.

 That was, in my opinion, his most impressive achievement in life. 

In the late forties, early fifties, the dashing Hans Hass and his beautiful wife Lotte began to dive with rebreathers and tanks. Strangely, that did not appeal to me, and as a I grew older, the boundless admiration I felt for him sort of slowly faded away. I was not really interested in the researcher he eventually became as it was the spear-fishing free-diver and intrepid shark-man who lit my fire, as it were. 

What a couple!! Hans Hass with his wife Lotte in the Red Sea (1950)

In contrast, Jacques-Yves Cousteau never attracted me the way Hans Hass did - perhaps I sensed that Hans Hass' French "competitor" seemed to be a very authoritarian, self-centered and vain individual, unlike the youthful and stunningly handsome Hans Hass who was what you would call a friendly buddy with the heart in the right place.

As I stated before, it was the young Hans Hass who ignited my passion for free-diving which is still as burning as it was back in 1955 when I donned an oval mask and duck-feet looking fins for the first time in my life. 

For that I am, and will always be, deeply grateful to this truly remarkable man.

My daughter-in-law Carmen surprised me again!

First big surprise: In July 2011 she gave birth to the most beautiful, charming, smart, and sensitive grand-child on earth: Wolfie. *)

OK - agreed, it was not just her accomplishment; Felix also played an instrumental role in it, as it were...  :-)

Carmen and Wolfie (April 2013)

Photo: Karin Leander

Second big surprise: During my recent stay in Miami, Carmen asked me one day, passing, whether I would like to see her first book, a children's book. I thought she would give me the manuscript to peruse it. 

No, what she handed me over was a freshly printed copy of the the book, "Written and illustrated by Carmen Leander" as it says on the cover. 

I could not believe what I held in my hands!!! I was absolutely flabbergasted!!! To be sure, I knew that Carmen likes to draw but so far I had not the slightest idea just how talented and creative she is, both as a story-teller and as an illustrator.  

"The Pleek-Plook Puzzle"  is written for young children aged 3 - 6 or 7 (even slightly older children, like the ones in my age bracket - I am 72 - would enjoy it, too...). 

Wolfie loves the book - no wonder, his mom dedicated it to him. While he cannot read it by himself yet - Wolfie is not even two years old - he already knows the entire alphabet, and going over the words to identify every single letter gives him what undeniably seems to be an immense literary pleasure...  :-)

The book's message is twofold, simple and straight-forward, designed to be easily and playfully assimilated by fresh and curious young minds: 

1) Help preserve the health of our oceans, 

                                 and 

2) Do not fear what seems to be strange, perhaps even threatening - rather get to know it to discover its beauty and purposefulness. 

Here is the link to amazon.com  

If you have small kids or grand-kids, get the book - they will love it, so will you!!! 

*) I know, I know - ALL grand-children are like that...   :-)

Ila France Porcher at the Forefront of Shark Conservation

Sharks need to be protected from Canadian politicians!

Photo: Wolfgang Leander (2008)

Click to enlarge

Here is a blog posted by Ila  - it's an open letter addressed to the Canadian government to reconsider their recent decision not to ban the sale of shark fins in their country.

With her letter Ila has proven, once again, her deep passion and love for sharks, her talent as a writer, and her unassuming tenacity in pursuing her sincere conviction that she must do everything within her reach to protect animals from human cruelty, greed, and depravity. Wherever Ila sees a creature suffer, her heart bleeds.

Ila France Porcher
Self-Portrait (2012)
Click to enlarge

Ila is one of the very few individuals I have come across who, unlike so many others, puts her ego behind the cause that has become the driving force of her life: Fighting for sharks, actively, totally committed, without pompously broadcasting her achievements which is what most in the shark "business" do - be they organizations or individuals.