On Mon, 25 Jun 2001 14:08:56 +0800, Bjorn Vang Jensen
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Without wishing to add fuel to the flames, I should add that spinners are
>present in the Indo-Pacific as well. I have seen one underwater

I would consider it "rare", given your exposure to scuba.  But at
least you KNOW the name and how to recognize one.

>at Western
>Rocky in Burma, and a colleague of mine just returned from diving the
>island of Bohol in the Philippines. She claims to have seen several on
>every dive over a week-long trip.

I would consider that a special location (such as Cocos is to
Hammerheads) in addition to a knowledgeable shark diver, to be
able to recognize one.  No one has that problem in Cocos.


> I suspect many confuse them with black-tips, or,
> because of the pointed snout, with makos (which, incidentally,
> are also known to breach).
>
>Bjorn

Or confused with dolphins.  An excellent dimension on the quantification
of "rarity" which I made in my posts, but not as forcefully and clearly.

Take this hypothetical example (which may be close to the skinner shark
example):

Suppose 99 out of 100 divers never HEARD of a skinner shark or know
how to recognize one from other more common species, then "skinner"
is RARE, by commonsense, if nothing else.  It is "rarely SEEN"
either because it is rare, or rarely recognized as one, or both.

The skinner shark certainly has BOTH of these dimensions of rarity.

You and Strike have seen one, each.  Crusty and I have seen none.
That's good enough for me to say they are rare.

The entire argumentative thread over this trivial point is silly
at best;  vitrolic at worse.  After many pointless rounds of name-
calling (by Chuck this time), I don't even know his POSITION on
whether he considered it "rare" or "not rare", let along in either
case, the FACT remains that prior to the flame thread, few on this
list KNOW what a skinner shark was, and very few had seen even ONE.
To me, that's rare -- at least for the READERS of this list.

-- Bob.