Knowledge obtains meaning only when combined with action. With science's recognition that humans and other animals share comparable minds and emotions, we are compelled to translate this knowledge to ethics and everyday living. We call this lived experience trans-species living. Every month we feature an example of people and animals living together that illustrates trans-species living.
The Caribbean Reef Sharks and Cristina Zenato
When I kiss a shark, when I hold a shark in my lap, I want people to stop and blink and think: "Hey, wait a minute, that's not what I thought sharks were like!" and have them be able to see beyond myth to the wonderful beings that sharks really are. —Cristina Zenato
Cristina Zenato is a professional diver who has spent the past 15 years exploring and studying sharks around the world. Over thousands of hours, she has observed various shark species including Tiger, Great White, Lemon, and Bull sharks, but considers her greatest experience the Caribbean Reef shark. She has completed more than 15,000 dives,including 2000 shark feeding dives, 600 cave dives, and 400 mixed-gas dives.
An avid diver since childhood, Cristina is renowned for her gift of developing positive, intimate relationships with sharks and the ability to apply touch techniques that relax sharks so that she may remove painful hooks from their mouths. This psychophysiological state (referred to as tonic immobility) is not generated in defense, but indicates the sharks' profound trust and sense of safety around this marine trans-species ambassador. Cristina's work has put a personal face on sharks and brings a profound unique understanding of these species.
Cristina's experiences, observations, feeding, and other interactions with sharks have played a key role in discrediting myths that have vilified and justified the mass killing of sharks. Fluent in five languages,
Cristina is actively sought after to participate in documentaries and diverse venues that support shark conservation including: BBC Nature, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Ushuaia Nature, ABC, Diver Magazine, Skin Diver, Sport Diver, and Protect the Sharks Foundation. Cristina is a qualified NSS-CDS Full Cave Instructor, TDI Cavern and Cave Instructor, TDI Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures and Extended Range Instructor, TDI Advanced Wreck Instructor, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, NAUI Open Water, Scuba Instructor, and SSI Rescue Instructor.
Cristina summarizes her attitude toward her work this way: "I dive for a living, and after all these years I still live for diving."
Cristina, who are sharks and why do people dislike them so much?
The biggest problem for sharks is that people don't know very much about them. What they do know is largely myth. When most people think of sharks, they think of the film Jaws and all these scary stories. There are all those movies and books that make certain animals like snakes and sharks look evil.
In Harry Potter, for example, the "bad" group of students belongs to the House of Slytherin, whose symbol is the snake. Other human cultures, however, who know sharks because they live with them every day, have a different view of these animals. If you go to Solomon Islands, they worship sharks. There are stories how sharks save fisherman. Sharks there are not considered evil there...they are saviors.
Everyone thinks of sharks as one of the most violent animals on the planet—even if they have never had an encounter with a shark. But sharks are not violent. Just like us and every other organism, sharks are built to eat and live. They only eat when they need to. For 99% of the time it is perfectly safe to be with sharks. But they are not noodles and they do get hungry. That is why no one should be surprised that a shark bites a surfer swimming over a school of fish. Or when some of these "cowboy" swimmers and divers who think that they can just jump in the water and everything will be fine—that's wrong too. Humans need to understand how the ocean and sharks work.
I think that humans don't like anyone else being stronger than them—wolves, weeds, bugs, sharks. These animals put us in our place and that upsets people so all the anger and fear is directed at destroying these animals. If you want to really get to know sharks and be able to spend time with them you have to have a different attitude.
First, you have to be humble, throw away human arrogance, the belief that says we deserve to do whatever we want, whenever we want, and be in control of everything. To get to know sharks, you need to change too. You also need to establish a relationship with sharks, take time to watch them and learn about how they think and behave just like we would do in another human culture.
Finally, you have to realize that there are times to be with sharks and times not, and not all sharks are the same. Just like people, every shark is different. The bottom line is that you have to respect sharks. That's what I teach in my diving and shark feeding classes.
People who understand sharks like this then realize that it is humans who are violent, not animals. When sharks kill, they are not wrapped up in all the violent motives and emotions like humans. Animals don't kill out of anger or revenge, but we do. Homo sapiens create extinctions. Humans beat and rape their women and make wars that kill millions of people that the killers have never met. Sharks kill to eat and survive.
Tell us a little more about sharks and how knowing them has affected you.
We still know so little about sharks and their lives. Compared with lions, elephants, and land animals, it is not easy to know about underwater society. I can spend many hours a day in the water with them, but it will never be much compared to the time I can spend with an animal on land. They are aquatic and I am terrestrial. But what we do know is fascinating and shows that there is so much more to learn.
First, not all sharks are the same. There over 400 species of sharks ranging from a few inches in length to almost fifty feet. Shark personalities and behavior are equally diverse. They don't even eat the same things. For example, the whale shark is a plankton eater, the Great White is a mammal eater, and the Caribbean Reef Shark is a scavenger. Many develop sexually relatively late, at about 16-20 years old. Some sharks have very slow reproductive rates having 1-2 pups per littler and give birth only every couple of years.
Sharks have a tough life and have to figure things out on their own without the guidance of mother or father. They have a strong social order usually based on size. For example, when one big shark sees me and is going to feed out of my hand, the others say. "Okay" and then they back off and swim away.
There is also a lot of differences between species and within species. Some sharks are loners, others like to congregate. Hammerheads like to swim around volcanic mounds in circles. Some think it has to do with magnetic pull, but maybe it is a social event. Then there is a lot of personality difference. Great Whites off South Africa, where currents are strong and water turbulent, are more skittish compared to those off Guadalupe where visibility is good and the seas are calmer. There, Great Whites are much calmer.
I think of it like someone who lives in New York City who has to walk through Central Park at night versus someone who lives in a small town and knows everyone. Body language reflects the environment. The same hold true for sharks. The weather and waves affect their attitude and how they act.
I have learned even more as I began to interact closely and feed and touch sharks. It is beautiful feeding them. Yes, I alter their way of being, but in my mind it is positive. People don't complain when sharks are chummed to attract them so that they can be fished and caught and killed. When I give them fish, it is a sign of friendship. Over time, when they start to trust me, many like it when begin to touch and pet them. I will tell you about one shark.
I call her "Stumpy" because she is missing part of upper caudal (back) tail. She is a Caribbean Reef shark. I've known her about 10-12 years. She is a middle-aged shark, gentle, very mellow, easily relaxed, and not interested in food. Some sharks get really pushy wanting to get food. Not her, she doesn't want food, she just loves to be touched and will sit there. I think if she had her way, she would sit there forever! I also believe that Stumpy has a real connection with me and feels comfortable. This is another thing that people don't get. Sharks can be a lot like us but very different at the same time. They have their own emotions, not human emotions.
Sharks have made me a better person. Because sharks bring out the extreme in people, it is easy to act in the extreme in return: get mad at people who attack sharks. But the sharks have taught me to be more tolerant and more considerate of others and realize that they can change for the good. One time, I was invited to dinner and met a fisherman. He fished all his life. Then one day he changed and now he collects data on sharks and sends the information to NOAA. Now he wants to keep sharks alive and uses his fishing job to collect data about sharks and release them alive.
I try to have a positive outlook. This kind of emotion is very contagious. When I am peaceful and patient with the sharks, act on their time, not my own, then they relax and trust me. After a shark has been hooked, they are very untrusting. They won't eat dead fish because it reminds them of the bait that was used on the hook that hurt them. Sharks have very sensitive mouths and hooking is really painful. It often takes quite a long while have to re-build this trust.
Sharks are seriously endangered. What can be done to help them?
Millions of sharks are caught as "bycatch", in huge industrial shrimp and other fishing enterprises. They die for nothing. Millions of others are "finned" where they are caught then their fins are hacked off then they are left to die in the ocean. Finning a shark is like raising chickens then you pick him up and chop off legs then throw away body. It is cruel and barbaric practice.
Shark fins are used to make shark fin soup. It used to be a special dish only eaten by a few wealthy people. But now, more people have money and want to do fancy things like other rich people so everyone wants shark fin soup. Shark fins are big multi-million dollar business. And while there are a lot of noise going on, the practice of finning and bycatch mortality is still really high.
We have laws to protect our children. What laws are there for shark kids?
I believe that all this human violence has had an effect on fish and shark behavior. I haven't made a formal study but have seen some differences and patterns of changed behavior over the years. For instance, sharks act very differently once they have experienced being hooked. They are edgier and lose their trust in me even though they were very confident before and they are adverse to dead fish because of the association with hooks It is very sad to see them made so fearful. I see similar changes in reef fish. After being hunted intensely, they hide. They are no longer bold, but scared.
We can't go on doing these things to animals. Human culture needs to change. Our ancestors were able to survive and live and preserve all the wildlife because they lived by the seasons.
I come from Italy. When I was a child, my grandmother would give me dinner and we ate whatever had been caught that day or taken from the garden. You ate what was available not expect to have shrimp every day or strawberries out of season. Also in the old days, people had a lot of children because not many survived. Now, the children survive because of medicine and other modern living. There are too many people who want too much.
If we want to save the shark, we need to start living modestly like our ancestors. If people fished like the old days, then there would be no bycatch problem. There are other things to do as well. Boycott shark fin soup, tell your pharmacy to stop selling shark cartilage.
Turn off all lights, unplug the television, and use canvas bags and begin to live like our ancestors: simply and with respect in honor the magnificent animals of the sea and land.
Photo credits (top to bottom):
Geert Droopers, Eddy Raphael, Thaddius Bedford, Eddy Raphael, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Joe Romeiro
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© 2012 Kerulos Center All rights reserved
"Science in service to animals"
Grass Roots Activist Leads Struggle to Ban Shark Finning
PRETOMA (Programma Restauración de Tortugas Marinas) is a Costa Rican non-profit marine conservation and research organization that works to protect sea turtles and sharks in Costa Rica and Central America.The organization is deeply involved in a public campaign and numerous initiatives against shark finning in Costa Rica, urging the government to ban the practice.
In 2010, PRETOMA's President, Randall Arauz, received The Goldman Environmental Prize for his grassroots mobilization to draw international attention to the cruelties of shark finning. PRETOMA's work has led to changes in Costa Rica's national fisheries law as well as a major UN recommendation for more humane capture methods.
On July 12, 2011, a letter signed by 4039 Costa Rican citizens was delivered to the country's President, Laura Chinchilla, urging an Executive Decree banning shark fin imports. Signatories on the petition included 324 citizens of 39 countries from Taiwan to the United Kingdom, all concerned over shark finning and the new loophole that the foreign fishing fleet now uses to circumvent Costa Rican controls and laws.
As of last December, Costa Rica has mandated that foreign fishing vessels must land their products at public docks in accordance with articles 211 and 212 of the General Customs Regulations Law and the Constitutional Court mandate of January 2006 (Res. 1109-2006).
