This island 210 miles south of San Diego is possibly the greatest place on Earth to view great white sharks in action — drop a cage in the water, add some chum, then jump in and watch the show thrash around you. But all of that is changing, and fast: The Mexican government last year banned chumming to protect the sharks. The irony is that no chum means fewer sharks, less tourist interest, and therefore more illegal fishing that the dive boats once held at bay. Outfitters are already alarmed by an increase in poaching and fear the great white population there is on the verge of collapse. “I’m cutting back on the number of trips,” says Patric Douglas, owner of outfitter Shark Diver. “But they’re filling up fast. People want to see these animals while they still have the chance” ($3,100 for five days; sharkdiver.com).

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It takes mere seconds of web surfing to realize I’m far from the only one to take offense at the rebranding of “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher as some sort of war correspondent, currently making his way through the Holy Land with the sort of ignorance that would fit perfectly into the classic wit of The Innocents Abroad if it wasn’t so genuine.

In his made-for-the-web coverage at Pajamas TV, Wurzelbacher repeatedly insists that he is not a journalist, proclaiming that his superiority over predatory media folks stems from his simple mission: To hunt down the facts and present them to viewers so that they can make their own judgments. Last time I checked, that IS journalism. But his self-described hunger for truth doesn’t really jibe well with his statements in the video above, essentially that it is “asinine” to allow journalists access to operations and atrocities of war because “you report where our troops are at, you report what’s happening day-to-day, you make a big deal out of it.”

Excuse me?

Of all the things to make a big deal of in this world, war seems like one of the most vital. Wurzelbacher wishes we could go back to the way it was during the first and second world wars, but he seems ignorant of the parabolic downturn to the numbers of American deaths in major U.S. conflicts as they relate to the amount of access given to the media. The Vietnam War is when the horrors of war really became visually accessible to the public via television and photographers and print journalists reporting from the field. Is it any wonder that there was such a public outcry over the violence? Jump forward to today and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Public opinion has far less tolerance for American deaths, abuses of power and years of unnecessary bloodshed when it’s in our face, visible 24/7 via the media.

While I’m at it, I’d like to point out another nitpicky bit of hypocrisy in Wurzelbacher’s coverage. As I remember it, Joe the Plumber’s entrance onto the public stage centered on his wariness over Obama’s “socialist tendencies.” He was the “Average Joe” who didn’t want to risk sharing his potential wealth. But as part of his ass-hole’s tour of Israel, in which he blindly professes the strength and wonder of the “Israel people” without providing any evidence that he has even a basic understanding of the history and struggle that brought the country into existence and created the on-going conflict, Wurzelbacher heads north to the Golan Heights to hang out on a Kibbutz.

Kibbutz: A collective farm or settlement owned by its members in modern Israel; children are reared collectively
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

That’s right Wurzelbacher. A Kibbutz is an Israeli commune, chock full of socialists working collectively and sharing the wealth. But that didn’t stop him from lauding the Kibbutz model as exemplary in the region, a place where men and women; Muslims, Christians and Jews alike could come together for the common good and live together in peace. “That doesn’t happen in Iran,” he explains, but technically, his political leanings as spouted during the McCain campaign put him firmly in the unsharing, divisive (Iran?) camp on that one.

Guadalupe shark diving operators may lose access to one of the world’s hottest spots for white shark cage diving.

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A new “diving simulator” for Nintendo Wii lets gamers get wet from their living rooms.

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Two dive instructors serve up a double shot of underwater action in a new dive travel and adventure TV series.

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