Diving instructor kills and eats a protected turtle in Indonesia (publishing the chilling videos on social media)

Digital madness knows no limits and often turns into the main test that frames the guilty. This is exactly what happened to Wei Shang, a 36-year-old Chinese diving instructor, who ended up at the center of an international poaching case after publishing images of an unprecedented environmental crime on social networks. During a dive in the protected waters of Piaynemo, in the Raja Ampat islands in Indonesia, the man filmed a real act of cruelty: he placed a scuba gun directly on the head of a hawksbill turtle, an example belonging to a species classified as critically endangered and strictly protected, killing it in cold blood.

Not happy with the brutal execution, the instructor documented the entire sequence and subsequently uploaded the photos in which he cooked and consumed it to the web. The combination of crimes committed is devastating: fishing with scuba and rifle in a protected marine area, poaching and killing of an animal at risk of extinction. The video, which quickly bounced from Chinese to global platforms, sparked a wave of indignation among the international diving communities and environmentalists, prompting local patrols from the Meos Mansar indigenous community to collect crucial evidence, including flight logs and hotel reservations, to block the perpetrator’s escape.

The arrest at Makassar airport and the heavy judicial consequences in Indonesia

The circle around the diver quickly closed on September 14, when agents intercepted and stopped him at Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport in Makassar as he attempted to leave the country. Although Wei Shang clumsily attempted to defend himself by claiming to be the victim of impersonation and online harassment, denying that he was the man in the video, local authorities transferred him to Sorong for formal criminal proceedings.

The accusations made against him are extremely serious: if investigators confirm his identity in the video, he risks a prison sentence of between 3 and 15 years in prison, as well as a financial penalty ranging from 200 million to 5 billion rupees, equal to approximately 250 thousand euros. The severity of the institutional response confirms the zero tolerance line adopted by the Indonesian authorities towards those who violate protected marine sanctuaries, transforming digital vanity into a one-way ticket to justice.