We need more shark attacks in Tobago. By this I don't mean sharks chomping down on humans and ripping off their legs, arms and heads in a feeding frenzy. That kind of shark attack doesn't happen much in our Caribbean world, except in childhood nightmares that scar us for life.
No, the kinds of shark attacks we need are like the one that happened at Old Grange Bay, Tobago, last week.Visitors filmed a Great Hammerhead, fin above water, in hot pursuit of prey. Four hundred million years of evolution played out, mere yards from the coastline.
A game of predator and prey, survival of the fittest. This game ended in a cloud of bloodied water, when the shark's teeth ripped through a 25-pound tarpon. The man filming the video said: "I ain't going in that water again."
The video was posted online. Commentators bit in to it. The usual "bake and shark" remarks were made. One woman wrote she was "praying for the swimmers at Mt Irvine, including my sister."
Another person remarked that Tobago needs more bake and shark shops: "You really think is a coincidence we don't hear about shark attacks off Trinidad waters? Betcha the sharks be warning each other, 'Nah dread, stay way from dere ...dem does eat we'."
The comments sum up how sharks figure in Trinidadian pop culture: food and fear. Both are the result of ignorance.Before continuing, be clear about this: sharks have lived in the ocean for 400 million years.
There is nothing new about sharks hunting off the coast of Tobago. It is their home. Every time you have taken a dip off Pigeon Point or No Man's Land they have been somewhere near.
Let's tackle the fear part first: nobody has ever been killed by a hammerhead shark. Since record-keeping began there have been 33 non-fatal attacks, but never a death. On the other hand, in the US, toddlers between the ages of one and three have shot more than 20 people this year alone.
Humans are bad risk assessors. (For clarification: be fearful of guns, not toddlers or sharks).
Hammerhead sharks are docile towards humans. Divers love to search them out and swim with them. It is not that hammerheads are cute or friendly: they simply did not evolve to eat humans. Seeing Homo sapiens in the water does not trigger their kill-instinct.
On the other hand they eat crabs, lobsters, squid, octopi, tarpon, sardines, jacks and groupers among others. Most of all though, they love stingrays.
We know what can happen when sharks are removed from the eco-system. There is an example from the US where an important scallop fishery collapsed after sharks were overfished. The stingrays they like to eat exploded in numbers because their predator was gone. Now, stingrays like to eat scallops that are economically important to humans. You've guessed it already: without sharks to keep them in check, the stingrays ate the scallops, leaving less food for humans.
Remember this the next time you hear the phrase: "Sharks keep the ocean productive." Ocean productivity is a hot iron subject as some scientists warn that global fisheries will collapse around 2050. That is not how I want to conclude this column though.
Sharks are economically important to Tobago. There was a recent report on CNN about the Caribbean being the world's fastest growing tourism market. One of the most valuable sectors of Caribbean tourism is the dive industry. Per capita, divers are among the biggest spenders.
Divers pay premium prices to see big sharks. In South Africa they will put you in a steel cage to see Great White Sharks. That is not the kind of shark tourism we have here, and quite frankly that would be a little frightening if we had Great Whites off of Pigeon Point. Rest assured: we do not, or at least none have ever been recorded.
The shark tourism we have is one for which divers will pay thousands of dollars to see 14 foot Great Hammerhead sharks congregating off of Sister's Rocks, on Tobago's northeast coast, as they have historically done. Sadly they have not been sighted for several years now. Rumour has it that a foreign fishing fleet fished them out, but nobody really knows the facts. That they have become rare reflects their global conservation status. They are now listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.
This is a blow to Tobago tourism. We have no accurate figures from Tobago but a 2011 study in the Pacific island nation of Palau found that sharks are worth more alive than dead.
In Palau each shark is worth nearly US$1.9 million over its lifetime. This is mostly due to the value of sharks to tourism. A dead shark in the market place–in the Trinidad NS Tobago context, read fried in a bake–is worth only US$108.
Based on these figures it is clear that we cannot afford to catch that beautiful Great Hammerhead that was filmed off of Old Grange Bay. To put it in a bake would be a crime against nature and an assault on our pocket. To kill it, taking freely from the Palau study, would cost Tobago US$1,899,892.
We need to see more big sharks closer to Tobago. Protecting sharks means protecting Tobago's tourism industry, which we need to fill the void of lost oil and gas revenue.
And yes, bake and shark is a national dish but it is an unsustainable one. Have a bake and flying fish, or a bake and king fish instead. Put on the condiments like garlic sauce and tamarind and you will not taste the difference.
For those who say that it is not shark being served but catfish, I urge you to ask for a bake and catfish. There is no conservation issue with catfish so you can eat guilt-free without seafood fraud issues.
Save our sharks, save our seas, save Tobago tourism.