Jorja Fox talks about her personal connection to the ocean and her perception of trophy hunting and the misrepresentation of sharks in the media.

Our Connection to the Ocean

I spend as much time on the water as I can. I’ve been bodyboarding since I was about six and surfing for about the last fifteen years. So I’m there, you know, several times a week if I can be.

A long time ago, when you think of how mankind kind of evolved on earth, it was this battle between man and nature. Man needed to dominate nature in order to survive. And we won that battle a long time ago. Now, you know, our job and and our kids’ job is to figure out the balance on the planet. I guess at the end of the day, it’s really important to know that that without the ocean, human survival will end. We need fish for our own survival and we need water and oxygen for out own survival. The ocean makes the bulk of the world’s oxygen. If the oceans are sick, then the balance of the entire planet will fall apart.

We cannot survive without a healthy ocean.

Sharks and the Media

The shark programing, I think it’s been very, very unfortunate you know in the last twenty or thirty years. On one hand, we know more about sharks than we ever did, and we’ve been exposed to sharks more than we could have ever imagined. But so much of that information has been negative information or kind of information that’s more for to instill fear in people or to instill cheap kinda thrills, action packed thrills.

The media, whether it’s been intentional or not, often focuses on stories that are gonna have a shock value for people, that are going to get people’s attention. So, often, that’s what sharks have have done inadvertently to people, or how people have been harmed by sharks. But I think what would be really important piece of this puzzle is if the media could start focusing on on how we are affecting short survival.

Trophy Hunting

Sport fishing, in my opinion, and hunting for sport is kind of something that should go the way the history books. Something that people did. We don’t do that anymore. Now we’re actually trying to create sustainable habitat for wildlife and for sea life.

There was a time where lead paint was a great idea and where asbestos was a great idea. And both of them are sort of human ingenuity and we kind of realized “Okay, well that was then and let’s build things differently now and and and do things differently now because that’s not sustainable for us anymore.”

Well me, personally, I’m not a fan of any kind of hunting and that would include commercial and sport fishing. It’s just not something that I really understand and … I think I would invite anybody who does enjoy that activity to take a few moments and ask themselves what about killing is so satisfying for them. I’m not really sure where the the sport or the fun is in that and I would encourage people just ask that question to themselves.