Ive been traveling most of the past week and havent posted a follow-up to my recent whale saga. Heres the update. My video went viral last week. It was picked up by ABC, CBS, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and many other sites. It has received over 300,000 hits on one site alone (rumble). Im guessing it has been viewed well over a million times total…maybe millions. Some of the articles positioned it as an ocean lover having a blissful experience while the writer for Yahoo really wanted to make a story about it. He positioned it as me having this close encounter and then added but is it legal? This led to a ton of people on the internet attacking me. They want me fined, jailed and fed to the sharks. My favorite comment compared me to George Zimmerman. Honestly Ive given very little attention to all the noise online. Ive been in touch with the writer from Yahoo and told him it would have been nice if we reached out to me before running this article. He left out a critical fact that is there no law about getting close to marine animals. In a protected area it is illegal to take, meaning you cannot fish. It would have been really tough for me to take that whale home with me. And clearly if I was bothering the whale he would have simply swam away from me. The bright side is that, except for one exception, EVERY single person who knows me, every person locally and every person who has knowledge of the ocean has supported me 100%. The exception was a supposed friend of mine who I am out on the water with ALL the time. He thought that I created this whole frenzy for money and for attention. He called me a f#$king idiot. That was very hurtful. He has since profusely apologized to me. The truth is I am not smart enough to intentionally make a video go viral and I havent made a dime off of this ordeal. And any money I do potentially make will go directly into funding the project that has been birthed from this situation. With the help of a couple great friends we will be launching the Project O website shortly which will be all about raising awareness and preserving our sacred ocean. I am a sensitive person so all the attention and energy around this has impacted me. Part of me wants to just do nothing and fly way under the radar. Part of me has such a deep love for the ocean and the life in it and will not allow me to lay low. In time we will see which part of me is stronger… my gut is it will be the latter. Thanks everyone for your love and support…
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:32:24 +0000
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