Bali Sharks offers an alternative model of conservation by involving local fishermen in shark conservation, preventing the practice of finning and breaking the chain of shark fin trading.
The company not only saves the sharks but has also created an eco-tourism model that provides a livelihood to fishermen and educates both tourists and the locals on the importance of sharks in the marine ecosystem.
Founded by Paul Friese, Bali Sharks rescues sharks by purchasing them from local fishermen. The sharks are then cared for in a nursery a pontoon they have set up in what they call Shark Island, before releasing the sharks into the wild.
In the nursery, located some five minutes by boat from Serangan island, tourists have the chance to swim and snorkel with the ocean’s top predator, to know them better and lose the scary image.
The idea for Bali Sharks started when Friese and a friend set up lines to attract and observe sharks from a cage. A month later, Friese got a call saying a fisherman had killed a three-meter tiger shark in their location.
Friese realized that every night, fishermen were poaching the sharks that he and his friend attracted to the area. They then decided to build a nursery to help protect the sharks, especially the young ones.
His efforts paid off. The fishermen who were poaching the local sharks are now bringing the animals to the nursery, where they get paid a fair price.
At first, my big concern was whether the fishermen would respond. So we said we would offer them money if they kept the sharks alive, Friese told Bali Daily recently.
We got lucky, word got out, and a fisherman showed up with 10 baby sharks, all of which had got stuck in a seaweed farm. We paid a fair value and the fisherman told all his friends, Hey these guys are for real, he bought sharks from me, I saved sharks.’ It was sort of revolutionary. They responded quickly, figuring out that they didn’t have to kill these sharks, but could still make money. Since then, they are still bringing us sharks. We’ve saved a total of 57 sharks so far, he said.
Bali Sharks has also been able to spin the conservation to provide the fishermen with an alternative livelihood by hiring them to work on the pontoon, be boat drivers and to help look after the sharks. Bali Sharks also buys fish from the fishermen to feed the sharks.
The fisherman still makes his money, they’re happy, and we can return the sharks to the wild at a later time, Friese said.
He dubbed his conservation effort as a small but working solution to minimize shark poaching.
He was concerned about the degree of shark finning in Bali.
If you go to Benoa, Padangbai, you are going to see boats coming in with just shark fins, and that’s where finning comes in. It means they’re gonna catch the shark, slice the fin off, keep the fin, which is only 3 percent volume of the shark. While the sharks are still alive, they kick them overboard, so they’re not even dead but they cannot swim because they have no fins. They just sink to the bottom and drown. So that’s how barbaric the fishing industry is regarding sharks.
Indonesia is the number one fin exporting country. But it’s not to say it’s all Indonesians. It’s also the Taiwanese coming in, it’s all the Malaysian fishermen, illegal fishing boats coming in, depleting Indonesia’s resources for their own money, and Indonesia suffers the losses.
Recently, they teamed up with Gili Shark Foundation to release the sharks in the waters of Gili Islands off Lombok, inside a 3,000-hectare marine protected area. They consider this area to be safer for the sharks. During the initial trial, four sharks were released in Gili waters.
In the sanctuary, the foundation would build a tank to enable tourists to see and feed the juvenile sharks before they were released into the wild, said Steve Woods, the founder.
What we want to do is to make the tourists, and locals, be aware of sharks. First, we get people to dive with sharks, and make sure that we give instructors shark-awareness training for free, so they can teach that to every diver that comes to the island.
We also have a social media campaign and promote it from signs around the island, so hopefully the island will be viewed as a shark sanctuary, and more people will come to the island and dive there, he added.
PT. Bina Media Tenggara © 2012