Marine life
often takes the brunt of moronic behavior from their land-dwelling neighbors,
the human. Remember the crooks who tried to steal the live shark from an
aquarium by pretending it was a baby, or the idiots attempting to surf on awhale shark?
But even by
those low standards, this latest outrage-sparker is quite something.
This
widely-shared video shows an Australia fisherman using a dead baby shark as a
make-shift bong. Just as the chorus to the freakishly popular kids' song “Baby
Shark” begins to play, the guy sparks up, inhales on the mouthpiece shoved in
the shark’s back, and puffs away before smiling to the camera.
It's unclear
what species of shark is featured in the video, although Melissa Cristina
Márquez, a marine biologist and conservationist, told The Washington Post it
might be a young bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas). It isn't illegal to catch
and kill this species, however, they are listed as "Near Threatened"
on the IUCN Red List.
Needless to
say, not everyone was amused by this guy’s late-night antics. The video, which
has since been removed from Facebook by its original poster, quickly faced a
fair amount of backlash.
“The monster in this video is the one in the hat – it isn’t the shark,” Oceans' Keepers, a marine conservation group, said in a Facebook post resharing the video.
“This video
– and everything about it – makes us sick and fills us with anger. The level of
arrogant disrespect is astounding. Humans, we NEED to do better.”
Justin
Field, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, wrote a lengthyFacebook post about the video adding to this sentiment.
“This video
is gross,” he wrote.
"Even if we catch and eat fish to sustain ourselves, we can do it do it in a way that respects what the ocean provides us and nurture it so that it can provide for the future.”
The man in
the video is a moderator on the Fried Fishing group, a popular Facebook group
that shares videos of fishing-related stunts and hijinks in Australia.
According to News.com.au, the group defended the video saying the shark was
“caught by my mate when we were fishing for mangrove jacks on Friday."
“After two
nights left in the icebox I came up with the idea. There is no possible way it
was alive,” he said, adding that it wasn’t illicit drugs in the shark-pipe,
only tobacco, rather spectacularly missing the point.
“I just want
to say thanks to the bunch of sooks who have complained to the point of the
police visiting,” he continued in a follow-up post. “Honestly I quit.”
FYI, “Sooks”
is Aussie slang for a coward, not to be confused with the crustaceanterminology meaning a mature female crab (we had to look it up too).
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