Mark speaks with Mike Coots, shark conservation activist, photographer, shark attack survivor, and all-around inspiration. Mike became an amputee when he lost his right leg in a tiger shark attack at 18 years old while bodyboarding, but he didn’t let that stop him from getting back in the water.

Today, Commander Divine speaks with Mike Coots, shark conservation activist, photographer, and shark attack survivor. In this episode, Mike discusses his incredible shark attack survival story and journey as an amputee, as well as the unsung role sharks play in the ocean’s ecosystem.

Key Takeaways:

Sharks are the garbagemen of the sea. Think about what would happen if you didn’t have someone collect your trash. Your house would get unlivable pretty quickly. This is what sharks do: they get rid of the sick, the dying, the diseased, and the trash in the ocean. If we lose our sharks, we lose our oceans.

The scourge of shark fin soup. One of the biggest dangers to sharks is shark fin soup. It’s supposed to be a delicacy, but it has no nutritional value and very little cultural value. Shark flesh of a shark has very little commercial value, whereas a shark fin commercially can go for hundreds and hundreds of dollars a pound. So fishermen just keep the fins only because they have limited space out at sea. They dump the rest of the shark overboard, still alive, and it will swim in circles for a couple of days and end up dead on the seafloor. You're taking such a little part of an animal that's much needed, all for a soup that isn't needed at all.

De-scarifying the shark. Mike’s underwater photography is a little different than other photographers… he shoots sharks as if they were humans. When he edits photos, he emphasizes attributes of the shark that humanize it; maybe a slight smirk, or a catchlight in its eye. His goal is to have people see a bit of themselves in the image. He says, “If you can relate to something, it makes you want to learn more about it and protect it.” The tides are changing. Through social media and the younger generation, people are starting to realize the value of whales and sharks in our oceans and are urging the older generation to make changes. There are so many good organizations out there that are doing such good things. We hear all this doom and gloom about our oceans, but to see all these different nonprofits, and especially so many young people actively involved, it gives us hope.