Feeding, baiting or fining?

Not so long ago, I remember starting a passionate conversation in the aisles of the Paris diving show. I then debated with great conviction on the enormous advantages of observing sharks without artificially attracting them with food and without modifying their natural behavior or causing food frenzies as spectacular as absent in the original marine environment (well, I thought- I anyway)

In doing so, I accused my interlocutor of illicit interference with nature, and on this final verdict pretended not to be interested in his arguments which could only be dictated by basely commercial necessities!

My interlocutor then, Jef, was the owner of Small Hope Bay Lodge, a hotel of huts with palm roofs with a diving center lost on a white sand beach in the north of the island of Andros. Andros is the largest but also the wildest of the Bahamian Islands.

Jeff then began to tell me about his passionate fight for the preservation of the Bahamian reef and its occupants, his involvement in politics with the Ministry of Tourism and the Environment. I did not think less that its main motivations related more to the rate of the dollar and the influx of tourists than to the preservation of marine species ...

It was a small sentence, however, that made the doubt germinate in my mind:

If you don't feed them, you don't see them, If you don't see them, you don't show them, If you don't show them, you don't help them...

(If you don't feed them, you don't see them, sIf you don't see them, you don't show them, sIf you don't show them, you don't help them ...

A few months later, on a diving trip to Small Hope Bay Lodge, Jeff had plenty of time to explain to me what he meant by that…

Like many other people around the world, Jeff campaigns for the protection of sharks and through them, the safeguard of the entire food chain down to its smallest links.

His fight is to make known one of the species present on the dive sites of the north of the island of Andros, the gray shark or Reef Shark. He believes that awareness requires knowledge and that tourists and divers who have encountered these large animals will be more aware of their cause.

Wanting to keep his distance from the feeding (action which consists in feeding the animals with the hand), Jeff imagined a ploy which allows the divers not to physically interfere with the sharks:

He freezes a ball of fish heads weighing several tens of kilos. The ball attached to a rope is then suspended in open water five or 6 meters from the bottom on which the divers position themselves in a circle. The "grays" are quick to arrive, initially shy. Then encouraged by the scent and aroma of fish that spread as the ice melts, the sharks embolden and tackle the ball in a festival of wide-spread jaws and sharp teeth. The grandiose spectacle lasts only a few minutes but culminates when one of the sharks manages to grab the last piece of fish, immediately pursued by a horde of hungry. The scene takes place only a few meters from the divers and the cameras, yet at no time do we experience the slightest impression of danger or the slightest apprehension.

As fast as they get excited, the sharks calm down and swim calmly on the bottom between the divers. We then observe them at leisure and this is the time when we really become aware of their size, their power… and their total lack of interest for divers. We do not interest them and they still give us proof by disappearing after a few minutes of fruitless search for a little food.

This technique of "feeding" without direct interference (dancing) is repeated on other sites in the Bahamas. 

Jim Abernethy offers cruises on the Gran Bahama reef from West Palm Beach in Florida. He uses a different but equally effective technique. It attracts lemon sharks (Lemon Soda) and grays but especially Tiger Sharks (Tigers) and Bulldogs (Bull shark) by means of closed boxes containing fresh fish (fresh at the start of the cruise in any case).

These boxes suspended under the boat or anchored on funds of a few meters dispense an aroma spread by the current of the Bahamas that the sharks are quick to come up. It always takes less than a few minutes before a dozen lemons and one or two tigers swim under the boat. The show can start and the free dives too !!!

In both cases, Jeff and Jim try to interfere with large animals as little as possible. In both cases, we are dealing with two extremely committed activists whose reputation is well established. No one could accuse Jim of wanting to trade it when we know that he sleeps some 48 weeks a year in the front triangle of his boat which he must share with the captain and 6 other people as the boat is cramped. Luxury is not on board. The fact remains that despite the Spartan conditions the dives are extraordinary and that one can stay at the bottom with the Tigers several hours a day and observe them at leisure.

All the divers who participated in these dives will tell you. We take the measurement of these big cats of several meters. We realize that we are not on the menu of their diet and that they are not endowed with any aggressiveness towards humans. (If they were aggressive, armed as they are, the man could never have entered the water and learned to swim ...)

We also come back with the intimate conviction that we must save the sharks and fight against the organized massacre of species necessary for the very survival of our oceans.

So if awareness comes through knowledge, if the dancing or feeding serve the cause of these majestic animals, and if they manage to decrease or even eradicate the finishing, then i am for the dancing and feeding.

STOP EATING SHARK END SOUP