Playa del Carmen - Lessons?

Please read this.
Yes that was two years ago and one would have hoped that by now, everybody had understood that message, maybe with one addendum: you need to get the local stakeholders involved.

I'm sure you know what happened in Playa del Carmen.
And if not, there's a plethora of newspaper articles and blog posts bemoaning the killing of nine pregnant Bull Sharks with approx 50 pups and the damage this has inflicted to the Shark population, the dive shops and the community in general. As a reaction, we now have an advocacy group, petitions and shark advocates calling for the protection of the Sharks during the season.
That's a good thing and fingers crossed that it's not too late.

What is not good is that it did not have to come to this.
A friend writes, I was never a fan on Phantom Divers in Mexico and yes, I dove that site quite a while back. It seems to me they have been hamfisting the encounters from day one. Probably too harsh but the fact is, this was obviously poorly planned and executed and as Steven Spencer correctly remarks, the feeding has undoubtedly aggregated the Sharks and directly led to their demise.

Where I however believe that Steven errs, is when he claims that this proves that Shark feeding dives are bad.
They are simply not. If conducted responsibly, they harm neither the animals nor the customers, provide for economic alternatives for the people who would otherwise kill the Sharks and very much contribute to dispelling the negative stereotypes.
Again, if conducted responsibly!

What this incident however does, is to once again reinforce my strong belief that we need to first and foremost assume the stewardship of the sites we develop and promote, and this from the very beginning - very much along the lines of Patric's Noblesse Oblige. Had the local dive shops and the people promoting this dive established the necessary protection and cooperated with the local communities from the outset, this would not have happened, period.

Which brings be straight over to this.



Totally EPIC - pun intended!
I really wish I could say something positive about this, the more since Oceanic Whitetips have become so critically depleted that any site offering reliable encounters is nothing short of miraculous and worthy of being promoted - if the diving is conducted responsibly!

But not like this!
Let there be no doubt that these Sharks are dangerous and that anybody conducting commercial dives with this species needs to set in place proper protocols. From Wikipedia, citing Compagno

Groups often form when individuals converge on a food source, whereupon a "feeding frenzy" may occur. This seems to be triggered not by blood in the water or by bloodlust, but by the species' highly strung and goal-directed nature (conserving energy between infrequent feeding opportunities when it is not slowly plying the open ocean). The oceanic whitetip is a competitive, opportunistic predator that exploits the resource at hand, rather than avoiding trouble in favor of a possibly easier future meal 

Interesting and probably true.
The pros have known it all along - but latest since that fateful attack in the Red Sea, everybody should know that snorkeling with Oceanic Whitetips is just plain stupid, the more as the Sharks are highly inquisitive and will readily approach SCUBA divers and allow for those coveted in-your-face wide-angle shots anyway. As to hand feeding those Silkies whilst on snorkel and without wetsuit - oh well, whatever.

Now, it appears, this site is about to go mainstream.
This was once one of Jimmy's discoveries and signature dives sites that would experience sporadic visits by the Shear Water. Next year, it appears, the Sharks will be subjected to a solid six weeks (click on Diving) of daily baiting.

Will that aggregate the Sharks? Will it change their behavior?
And if so: is anybody developing bomb-proof commercial Shark diving protocols and much more importantly, is anybody talking to the local stakeholders, namely the game and the commercial fishermen to at least develop some local consensus about their value to the local economy and the need to preserve this valuable resource? Yes there's a push for the nation-wide protection of all Sharks in the Bahamas - but this is not a done deal quite yet, and those Whitetips that are being publicized and aggregated may well still be fair game in April, meaning that any Shark fisherman wanting to kill them may do so in total impunity.
What can be done to prevent that?

Please, think about it.
Please, learn the lessons from Playa del Carmen.