A tourism project in Benga Lagoon in Fiji is proving sharks are worth more alive than dead.
A bowl of shark fin soup in a resturant is over $100 per bowl, but tourists will gladly pay that each to see these sharks including bull sharks and the mighty tiger shark alive in their natural habitat. And dives take place several times each week.
To protect the sharks the marine at Benga has been declared a marine reserve, this has the added bonus of protecting the other fish in the area as well.
Before the Benga reserve was establish the marine had been over fished. Seeing even one shark in the area was a rarity, today the divers regularly see 30 sharks at one time!
Some of the money raised goes to local villages as an incentive not to kill sharks. The other advantage of the reserve is that some of the fish spill out of the reserve into surrounding waters and local fisherman have been reporting larger catches than they had in previous years before the reserve was set up.
Fijians have long respected sharks. Their ancestors viewed sharks as gods who kept them safe from harm, they would feed sharks, not hunt them. Their children continue the tradition, the main shark feeder who dives with the tourists comes from a local village where the shark is still viewed as a god.
Bull Sharks are regularily found in the area and can grow up to 3.5 meters in length making them one of the larger shark species, they have an agressive reputation even for sharks.
More rarely seen are Tiger sharks. These sharks are massive, they can grown in excess of 5 meters long and are the largest specie of shark in Fiji.
Here you can the video on the Fiji reserve as part of the BBC’s documentary series “South Pacific” looking at remote south pacific islands.
