Archive for the ‘Fiji Expedition Volunteers’ Category
Saturday morning and it’s high tide, it’s a little rough going over to the barrier reef, so instead we drop into a new area that we’ve never dived before, just inside the passage. I’ve no idea what to expect and we descend to about 10m and wait to see what we find. Drifting along in the shallows, Hansi signals me that he’s just seen a turtle, then in front of us a 2.5m Gray Reef Shark appears, cruising silently along the reef. It is such an impressive and graceful fish and we watch transfixed as it checks us all out before moving off behind a coral head. We mosey around the shallows, seeing lots of Snapper and taking pictures. Two or three Whitetip Reef Sharks are also cruising around, un-phased by our presence. This is inspiring as just in the last few days we’ve seen a few illegally set longlines when we’ve been out in the boat. Recently, we have been made aware of at least two local gentlemen running shark-finning operations, they sell the fins to the Asian markets, to make soup. Shark fins are only added to thicken the soup, as they don’t have any discernable flavour. Shark Fin Soup is eaten by the wealthy as a status symbol. The shark is then thrown back into the water to drown in agony. It’s a barbaric and completely wasteful practice as the rest of the animal isn’t even eaten. In response to this issue, South Pacific Projects is rolling out a new shark awareness project in local schools, using teaching materials donated by the London Aquarium http://www.visitsealife.com We hope that by educating Fijian children about this beautiful and much-maligned creature, they will gain a better understanding of the shark’s role on the reef and in the ocean and think more critically about shark-finning and other unsustainable fishing practices.
Back on our dive, the big Grey Reef Shark comes back to see us again and again and in the photo you see here, I didn’t even know it was there! Andrew got this great shot that I also sent it to my Mum to demonstrate that yes, we do dive with sharks and no, they’re not dangerous! Sharks are such beautiful and misunderstood animals, if you’ve only seen movies like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, then I can recommend the documentary ‘Sharkwater’ to get the other side of the story. About 7 or 8 people a year are actually killed by sharks worldwide. Humans, on the other hand, slaughter over 100,000,000 sharks a year and this is a very conservative estimate. So who is the more fearsome predator?
Howard Foster – Leleuvia, Fiji.