SHARK el Sheik or a huge pool without sharks?

Since the July 2005 terrorist attacks, the quiet tourist destination of Sharm el Sheikh, on the Red Sea, had not attracted so much interest from the media worldwide. During the past few weeks, the media have started talking more and more about Sharm. Once again, it’s due to unpleasant facts: a series of unprecedented incidents, actually. No bombs this time, but a shark that bit several swimmers.

Journalists and TV news, not seeming to care much about providing accurate information to their public, and seeming more interested in the sensationalism of a shark biting humans, even said that a great white shark is terrorizing Sharm. Too bad that great whites, i.e. Carcharodon carcharias, live for the most part in cold waters and, so far, have never been spotted in the Red Sea.

But let’s have a look at what happened in chronological order.

October 20: Sharm Club village. First encounter with an adult oceanic white tip shark, i.e. Carcharodon longimanus, which was seen and photographed near shore.

First encounter _ Photo by OnlyOne ApneaCenter

An eye witness said that a woman who was swimming near the floating jetty had started screaming. From shore, it looked like the swimmer’s fins were set wide apart emerging above the water. But in reality the swimmer was not wearing any fins or mask. The fins that the lady onshore had seen were the dorsal and caudal fin of an oceanic white tip shark. Fortunately, the victim was only slightly injured and just needed a few stitches; however, she certainly got a nice scare; the circular injury inflicted by the shark was probably due to chafing by its rough skin, rather than to a shark bite. We must say, however, that it wasn’t the first time that an oceanic white tip shark had been seen roaming curiously in the area close to the dive platform used by free divers for training, but it had never come so close to swimmers before.

Not to create panic, the accident wasn’t disclosed, even though in Sharm rumors spread fast and word got around anyway.

November 30, more than a month later: 3 swimmers were bitten by a shark on the same day. The authorities blamed a single adult oceanic white tip shark about 8 ft. long, which had been photographed by a scuba diver at the Coral Bay resort.  

White tip shark responsible for the Coral Bay attack; it has a semi-circular scar (apparently due to a bite) on its caudal fin_Photo by Fabio Casarotti

All the incidents took place in an area along the coast from the Coral Bay Resort, where a Russian woman was bit, to the tip of Ras Nasrani, an area of approximately 10 km.

In these incidents, 3 Russian tourists, 2 men and a woman, were seriously injured and rushed to hospital in Cairo.     

At this point, Egyptian authorities, in a panic, decided to take measures, since they were facing an unprecedented situation.

December 1: all beaches were closed and all water sports activities, including scuba diving and snorkeling were suspended everywhere, except in the area of the Ras Mohamed marine park. During the night, the shark hunt began. Boats from the marine park chummed the water, i.e. threw huge amounts of blood and cut up fish meat in the water to attract sharks. Official sources reported that 2 sharks were killed, a mako shark and an oceanic white tip, which were immediately blamed for the incidents.

However, a couple of days after the autopsy, the authorities revealed that the two sharks were innocent. They were killed for no reason.

December 4: beaches were reopened, after a series of check dives were conducted to make sure the area was safe. 

December 5: an elderly German woman was bitten by an oceanic white tip shark while she was swimming off the Hyatt Hotel. She suffered serious injuries and died. Eye witnesses reported that, before the incident, some tourists had thrown food in the water, attracting a multitude of coral reef fish to take some pictures. Feeding fish is prohibited everywhere in the Red Sea, but unfortunately people often don’t abide by this rule. Some hotels even give their guests “fish bags”, i.e. bags of leftover food to feed the fish. Before feeding fish, though, it would be wise to think that small fish attract big fish. It’s a law of nature.   

Glass bottom boats usually throw food in the water to attract a multitude of colorful fish for the tourists to marvel at. Nobody does anything to stop them, however, so as not to spoil their questionable business.

On the same day, December 5, all beaches are once again closed. Diving, snorkeling activities and water sports are banned. Several internationally acclaimed shark experts are invited to Sharm to investigate the causes of the atypical behavior of the shark or sharks involved in the incidents.

8-28 December: diving, snorkeling activities, and water sports are allowed provided that a series of safety rules are complied with, following the advice of the team of shark experts.

There is talk of installing shark nets to protect hotel beaches, but this is only possible on shallow and sandy bottoms, without current. The maximum depth of the Red Sea is 2600 meters, the currents are often very strong, and close to shore there are reefs that from the surface plunge straight down hundreds of meters. Then there is talk of erecting watch towers on all the hotel beaches, and lastly of creating a system of buoys emitting electromagnetic signals capable of keeping sharks and rays away from the coast where the hotels are located. If this were the case, the entire coast of Sharm would become a huge swimming pool without sharks or rays. Wouldn’t it be easier to educate tourists entering the water to respect the marine environment and its rules?

Ten years ago, Sharm was mainly a place for divers, who for the most part, are used to respecting the marine environment where they dive.

Today, Sharm is a place for mass tourism. It’s a cheap destination, and ever-growing numbers of people come here for a week’s holiday without having a clue about the fragile marine ecosystem of the Red Sea, nor about the damage that their ignorance causes.  To please the tourist market, is it then more desirable to turn the Red Sea into a gigantic open-air aquarium? So it seems.

Non-official sources report that the shark hunt did not end with the killing of the 2 sharks at the beginning of December, but that at present at least 8 sharks of different species have been killed, including a nurse shark, which is not considered even potentially dangerous to humans. Why?

The HEPCA, Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association, condemns without reserve the indiscriminate killing of sharks in Sharm el Sheikh. Since 2006, Egyptian law prohibits the capture, killing, and sale of sharks. Fishing is also prohibited, except for set periods of time and outside national parks. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more common to see small fishing boats stealing away from dive sites at the break of dawn, after a night of illegal fishing. Year after year, diving in Sharm, it’s easy to see the consequences of over-fishing: there is less and less fish in the water. 

A senior official of the South Sinai Protectorate, who is also a marine biologist, defended the SSP from the accusations of HEPCA describing the indiscriminate killing of sharks as a scientifically recognized shark assessment. This “assessment” involves the examination of shark innards, and therefore the killing of all captured specimens. The brilliant biologist, after examining shark innards for little over a week, came to a ridiculous conclusion: in the Red Sea, there would be a “surplus” of sharks. At the global level, many species of shark are endangered, and some even risk extinction. Those who have dived in Sharm know that it is not common or easy to encounter these wonderful creatures underwater, so the question that comes to mind is: how can anyone state that there is a “surplus” of sharks in Sharm?

What were the causes of this atypical behavior of sharks? Let’s start with saying that no shark willingly attacks a human being. Sharks do not eat people. Our meat doesn’t taste good to a shark. If a shark bites, it’s a way of understanding what we are. In fact, if a shark happens to bite a person, it bites and then releases. Sharks don’t eat people, because we’re not its usual preys. All incidents are caused by erroneous human behaviors, often unintentional. When we enter the water, we cross the threshold of a world that is not our own; the possibility of encountering a shark is remote, but it exists. It is our responsibility to understand how to interact with these creatures, that have been the ocean’s top predators for millions of years. We can’t simply chase them away from their natural habitat.

The major cause of the incidents that happened in Sharm is now well known, and it is, as usual, an example of erroneous human behavior. At the end of November, after the Eid, the Muslim sacrifice feast, the crew of a cargo ship threw overboard over a thousand carcasses of sheep, thinking that they would sink. Instead, the carcasses became bloated with water and started floating on the surface of the sea, carried by currents.

Sheep carcass… apparently, a cargo ship threw overboard hundreds of carcasses after the Eid, the Muslim sacrifice feast… it seems like this attracted the sharks…

Sharks are the garbage collectors of the sea, and were attracted by the decaying carcasses. Currents then brought the carcasses and the sharks close to the coast. An excessive abundance of food in the water can also bring about a behavior that in ecology is called “feeding frenzy”, which, as the name suggests, causes predators, such as sharks, to go wild and bite anything within biting range, including other sharks or a person that happens to come between the shark and its food. This is a perfectly understandable behavior. Why, then, the sea and its creatures have to pay for a human mistake?

Curious facts about sharks:

-Among the over 500 species of sharks known to man, only 4 are considered potentially dangerous for man: the great white shark, the oceanic white tip, the tiger shark, and the Zambezi shark, or bull shark.

- A shark only eats 1 and a half kilos of fish 3 times a week.

- How dangerous are sharks? 100 million to 1, this is the ratio of shark/man deaths in 2007; this means that for every man killed by a shark, there are 100 million sharks killed by man.

To know more about these wonderful predators of the sea, to learn how to behave if you happen to interact with them, take a few minutes to watch this amazing video: it makes one think. Enjoy it!  

P.S. Good news: The Governor of South Sinai, on January 2, 2011, stated that he did not agree to install an electromagnetic shield to protect the beaches from sharks as there is no scientific proof that shows that this device actually works. A big thank you from the Red Sea sharks!

Article by: Barbara Ferri 


Barbara Ferri is a pisces, the daughter of a Navy officer and a globetrotter. She arrived in Sharm El Sheikh in 1999 where, bewitched by its underwater beauties, she still lives, dedicating her life to underwater filming. She graduated in creative writing and is a writer.  

www.greenoceansurfing.com