This week we ran a video of a rare Porbeagle shark caught on a ROV pilot’s camera in the North Sea and it went viral.
The social share and reach of the story was fantastic but ultimately short lived. Energy Voice was soon asked to take the film, which was uploaded by its creator to the public domain, down because it was “commercially sensitive”.
What’s so sensitive about a shark you might ask? Apparently a small logo, which is again available in the public domain.
It was a sad showing of how over-complicated reasoning and quick-trigger pulling beat out simple common sense.
The video was a platform for the industry to show the opportunities available in the sector – the adventure, the unexpected, the fascinating.
Our younger audience was exposed to everything that’s great about the North Sea. It’s a place where sheer human brainpower and nature’s most resilient creatures exist in total harmony.
The video had the power to pique the interest of the next generation of innovators, who could potentially side-step the sector all together assuming it’s just “dirty work”.
Ultimately, it took nearly 48 hours and three different companies to come back and say the shark video could not be re-instated.
In the words of Mayor Vaughn, from the famed film Jaws, “it’s all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
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