VIENNA (AUSTRIA)- Last weekend, Austrian undersea explorer and writer Hans Hass passed away ar age 94. Because of his work campaigning for a better reputation of sharks, he was named ‘Lord of the Sharks’.
Hass published 32 books and produced 73 films during his career on the seas in his “Xarifa” boat. He was born in 1919 in Vienna. His expeditions, books and films were part of the pioneering 20th-century efforts to unlock the secrets of the deep. Sharks were his pet project.
His 1951 film Adventure in the Red Sea was one of the first post-war films to make the underwater world observable to all. He went on publishing about the underwater world in his first book, “Hunting underwater with a harpoon and a camera,
Hass consistently campaigned to remove the stigma of sharks as savages of the sea. He released films including “People among sharks,” and books like “Among the corals and the sharks” or “The shark – the legend of a murderer” to seek to improve awareness on the animals.
Hass wanted to move like a ‘fish among the fishes’.Therefore he developed a string of methods and tools to allow him to better discover the seas. He made the first working underwater camera, developed special diving fins and implemented a new diving kit with oxygen supply that enabled him to act more independently of his research ship.
Hass stopped diving himself decades ago, but remained a prolific writer on the issue. He also continued to campaign for undersea creatures and became a keen advocate of ecologist causes in later life.