GUADALUPE ISLAND, Mexico — Two divers were rescued after a shark ripped off the side of a tourist boat shark feeding cage at Guadalupe Island in Mexico. The crew of the MV Searcher, a San Diego-based liveaboard owned by Great White Adventures, managed to pull the divers to safety after a great white shark entered the cage and ripped off one of its side panels. Environmentalists and legitimate shark scientists condemn shark feeding and shark baiting, a multi-million dollar tourism industry that exploits and damages sharks for thrill seeking tourists and self-aggrandizing underwater photographers who sell "sensational" shark photos and videos that disrespect and misrepresent sharks as chummed and manipulated television entertainment fodder. San Diego-based Great White Adventures, also known as Shark Diving International, and other shark feeders deliberately downplay the lucrative business of selling thrills to tourists and describe themselves as "shark conservationists" and "educators". Shark experts dismiss such claims as blatant greenwash by profiteers who actually put sharks at greater risk by damaging their instinctive wariness of humans. George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, questions the conservation value of viewing sharks that have been virtually programmed to tolerate people. "What you're essentially seeing is an underwater circus. It's like seeing tigers jump through hoops," Burgess said. "I don't buy the argument that this is making converts for sharks. What it is is putting money in the bank by making people come to your boat instead of someone else's." In February 2008, a tourist died after he was attacked by a baited shark while diving with Jim Abernethy Scuba Adventures, a notorious Florida-based shark feeding profiteer who takes thrill-seeking tourists to the Bahamas. To avoid prosecution for running a business that systematically abuses marine wildlife and endangers humans, Abernethy moved his shark baiting tours offshore after shark feeding was banned in Florida in January 2002. Within six months, shark feeding was also banned in Hawaii and the Cayman Islands. Bad for sharks, bad for people Most scientists who study sharks condemn DEMA, PADI, Scuba Diving Magazine and scores of sleazy, underwater image touts who collude to green-wash the lucrative business of shark baiting and prevent full protection of sharks and other endangered marine species. Dr. Denise Herzing, a renowned marine mammalogist who conducts research in the Bahamas says feeding sharks is bad for people and sharks. ''Feeding the sharks changes their behavior,'' Herzing said. "It's just like feeding bears at Yellowstone. It makes them associate humans with food. It makes them more aggressive. It endangers people.'' Dr. Burgess says there have been more than two dozen injuries involving shark-feeding dives. He opposes all shark feeding, not because of the danger but because it trains sharks to expect food from people and not to fear them. He said: "They lose their natural caution around human beings. For the same reason on land, you don't feed alligators or bears. It's changing the behaviour of sharks and the ecology by concentrating sharks in one area." | 
