Bulldogs and tiger sharks allowed to fish within the reserve!
The prefect of La Reunion has made an order 16 February 2016 – against the advice of its scientific council and without public consultation – allowing shark fishing in the special protected areas within the National Marine park of La Réunion. While shark nets – particularly expensive and funded by public money – have been set up to securesurf spots, shark fishing program has been intensified without any given justification … Tigers and bull sharks can be caught within the reserve in the areas of the Ravine Trois Bassins, Boucan Canot and Cape La Houssaye by providers appointed by the Regional Fisheries Committee within the Caprequins 2 program (experimental management program risk targeted by the capture of coastal sharks).
As noted François Sarano, founder of the association Longitude 181 Nature, “this order is illegal, yet without mandatory public consultation under Article L.120-1 of the Code of the Environment. Well beyond to the illegality of the decision taken against all scientific advice, we recall that the French state finances massively since 2 years a program of destruction of all sharks which approach the island of La Reunion, even with the draw well baited longlines”.
A despicable program led by France, host of the COP21, which Senate has yet voted an ambitious project of Biodiversity Act, which aims is to better balance human activities and biodiversity. We can also visit the government website, to appreciate the text proposes, “in harmony with human activities, it aims to create areas at sea or in rivers that protect the life cycle of fish species. In Indeed, the condition of some areas depends on marine biodiversity. the preservation of the marine environment in all its components will have a special place in the future national Agency for biodiversity…
The decision of the prefect in La Reunion is contrary to this direction announced by the government and shows the world how France handles the sharks problematic.
It’s time to focus on the real problems such as pollution from freshwater
Sharks are good “scapegoats” who do not protest and slaughter is certainly easier than tackling the real problems such as freshwater inputs loaded with various nutrients and pollutants. In the results of CHARC program conducted by the IRD, the presence Bulldogs in front of the “ravines” can be explained by the freshwater inputs and what they carry. Pollution from freshwaters could be a serious hypothesis to the spate of shark attacks.
Philippe Mespoulhe, Doctor of Marine Biology Universities, who studied for many years the interactions of sharks with human, the causes of attacks on humans are obviously multifactorial.
One factor that nobody talks about is the southern swell (famous for surfers in winter) which literally scrapes the deep sites around the island to more than 150 meters deep, mooving months of terrigenous sedimentation and organic, “memory polluting abuses” of Man, finishing to awaken all the senses of the shark to the surface.
The ecological balance is needed to be restored in the coral reefs and this could permanently solve the shark attack. If the marine reserve is the tool in place to achieve this objective, it is by strengthening its actions and not by exterminating species that we move forward.
