Caribbean Beat — September/October 2018 (#153)

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The Barbados meeting was the culmination of a
burst of activity within recent years, after decades
of apathy that saw shark numbers dwindle because
of overfishing and habitat destruction. About a
third of shark and ray species in the Americas are
listed as endangered, vulnerable, or threatened
by the international organisation responsible for
keeping track. But the IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species has only been able to give assessments
for species for which there are enough data
to make a determination. Almost half of the sharks
and rays in the region have been deemed “data
deficient” — not enough information has been
collected about them.
To help make up lost ground in shark monitoring
and protection, a couple of data collection
projects started in 2012, with the Belize-based
research organisation MarAlliance using underwater
cameras, tagging, and other techniques to track
sharks and rays in Belize, Cuba, and elsewhere
in the region. In 2015, Florida International University
started the Global FinPrint, a three-year
underwater camera survey of sharks and rays
around the world. Researchers in the Caribbean
countries of Belize, the Dominican Republic,
Barbados, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands
are participating.
The only legally binding multilateral agreement
to protect wildlife in the Caribbean, the Protocol
Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife
(known as the SPAW Protocol), last year for the
first time extended protections to sharks and rays,
prohibiting the commercial exploitation of one
type of sawfish and listing whale sharks, oceanic
About a third of shark and ray species in
the Americas are listed as endangered,
vulnerable, or threatened
whitetip sharks, hammerhead sharks, and manta rays as vulnerable and in
need of fishing controls.
In 2015 and 2016, environmental philanthropist Richard Branson cohosted
symposia in the Bahamas and Sint Maarten, bringing government
leaders together to hear marine experts and activists promote shark sanctuaries,
areas prohibiting shark fishing and the trading of shark parts. This led to
a group of Caribbean countries declaring their waters as shark sanctuaries.
Shark sanctuaries around the world are located in areas that rely on sun and
sea to attract tourists. And the health of the sea relies on sharks, which are at
the top of the ocean food chain. Like other predators, they control the populations
of animals lower on the chain and maintain balance in nature.
The Bahamas established the first shark sanctuary in the Caribbean in
2011. It was followed by the British Virgin Islands (2014), the Caribbean Netherlands
(Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Bonaire, 2015), the Cayman Islands (2016),
Why sharks matter
When most people in the Caribbean think
of sharks, they either imagine them as
scary predators — thanks to pop-culture
depictions like Jaws — or, conversely, as a
source of meat. But shark species play a
major role in keeping marine ecosystems
healthy. At the top of the ocean food chain,
sharks help keep fish populations in check.
When sharks disappear, other fish species
can explode in numbers, throwing things
off balance. Other carnivorous fish start to
dominate, at the expense of algae-eating
fish which keep coral reefs healthy.
There’s another reason to protect sharks
in the tourism-dependent Caribbean.
Around the world, shark tourism is estimated
to earn more than US$300 million per
year, as eco-tourists pay to observe and
experience sharks in the wild. It’s already a
thriving business in the Bahamas, and other
Caribbean countries stand to benefit also —
if they can keep their shark populations from
disappearing.
Sint Maarten (2016), Curaçao (2016), and Grenada
(2016). “Our surveys have shown that most tourists
come for our pristine waters and vibrant
marine ecosystem,” says Johanna Kohler, a shark
researcher and conservationist in the Cayman
Islands. “Most divers love to see sharks when diving,
and even tourists who don’t want to see a shark
while diving or swimming appreciate knowing that
sharks are present, because it is a well-known fact
that sharks are important to our oceans.”
One country on its own can protect the
animals in its land space. The sea is a
different prospect, especially in a region
as small as the Caribbean. To have any real impact,
efforts to protect marine life need the involvement
of all or most countries in the region.
“We’ve tagged a tiger shark in Sint Maarten,
and it swam the breadth of the Caribbean,” says
Tadzio Bervoets, who’s heading a research and
public education project in the Dutch Caribbean
called Save Our Sharks. “It swam all the way to
Trinidad, then it went to Barbados, hung out there
for a while. Then it swam up to the Dominican
Republic, almost made it to Jamaica. Now it’s
hanging around Puerto Rico,” he says.
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