PDC bull sharks wiped out.

[Fernie]

So what is it? Are the sharks gone or are they still there?

 

[inventor]

This article gives more details.

Oceanic Defense: Economic Hit in a Mexican Town - a community's sharks killed

 

[Jax]

This is the same group of sharks every year and when 1 let alone 9 gets fished or killed all of them will leave. There have been studies about this and one example is Great Whites. When a Great White is fished out of an area you won't see the same ones for a very long time or ever. They are not stupid animals, they know that members of their group are gone and their defense to that is leaving and not coming back. My prediction is that we won't see them again this year and possibly for a while after.

Geofish, is this area also a marine park, as it is on the Cozumel side? The article said the fishing was legal . . .

 

[WavyGravy]

I'm sitting in the Blue Angel lounge typing this with sadness - my dive tomorrow with the bull sharks was cancelled as the op on the mainland i was going to use believes the sharks were wiped out by fisherman. None showed up for the last few dives. Jorge said he thinks it is just early in the season, but if they were here a few days ago, than it isn't too early. So sad.

Boo-urns!

 

[DandyDon]

Señor Andusi walked into one of the leading dive shops in town, Phantom Divers, and apologized to the owner.

Gawd! Think maybe the Mexican government will take the message to protect sharks, at least make it illegal to kill them? It would be a step, albeit toothless.

 

[DMG]

I was in Puerto Morelos on that Saturday morning and personally saw several large sharks in the back of a pickup truck parked outside a restaurant. We were headed to a dive shop next door for some morning dives. It's very very sad that this type of reckless behavior is allowed to happen.

 

[vladimir]

If they were fished out, the divers who made a spectacle of their presence making it known are partially to blame.

A few years ago, tiger sharks were made easy victims in South Africa as well. Advertising "sharks here" is a great help to fishers.

I was on the Spoilsport's Coral Sea itinerary in 1999. The marquee dive was the ScubaZoo, during which a trashcan full of tuna was used to lure dozens of sharks, then opened to elicit a feeding frenzy. The boat was moved for the next dive, but still surrounded by sharks that had followed it, having been habituated to free tuna from the boat. A year later I took the same cruise. The shark population had been cut dramatically, and the trip director told me shark fisherman had purposely targeted the ScubaZoo dive site, since the sharks assembled to be slaughtered at the sound of their boat engines.

 

[Geofish Dive in Playa]

It is not a Marine Park. But I was speaking with a friend who is a fisherman here in Playa and he said that you have to have a special permit to be able to fish in the area he was fishing. So I don't know if there is anything that can be done to him for fishing in that area without a permit, but I am pretty sure what he did was not illegal, and that is very unfortunate!

 

[SoccerJeni]

Oh gosh! That is breaking my heart! I hate seeing pictures of dead sharks at the bottom of the ocean without their fins

 

[pidgiepoo]

This makes me sick. I was looking into doing the shark dive this December. Should have done it last year when had the chance. Now it's just another one of those things that probably won't be available for future generations.