Last Sunday, February 26th, we had the honor of diving with the members of fishing cooperatives from Quintana Roo. Along with Luis Lombardo of Saving Our Sharks and Jaime Gonzalez of CRIM the fishemen got to live this lifetime experience: diving with Bull Sharks. They were so happy at the end of the dive because they got to see 10 bull sharks during our legendary dive.
At Phantom Divers we hope to raise awareness amongst fishermen and invite them to refocus their practice supporting the conservation efforts of our reefs, marine life, and beaches, as well as promoting conscious and ecological tourism. This is important to keep our oceans clean and increase the population growth of the bull sharks that visits us every season from November to March.
During COP 13 held in Cancun in December 2016 four new natural protected areas were declared by presidential decree.
Now is more than 91 million hectares the total of land that have been desiganted for environmental conservation. This area of the biosphere reserve of the Mexican Caribbean is half of the Mesoamerican reef system.
The
biosphere reserve of the Mexican Caribbean comprises the marine portion
of the municipalities of Lazaro Cardenas, Isla Mujeres, Benito Juarez,
Solidaridad, Puerto Morelos, Cozumel, Tulum, Felipe Carrillo Puerto,
Bacalar and Othon P. Blanco.
Whit
this new decree Mexico reaches 181 protected areas, almost 6 million hectares only in the Caribbean. The protected area is equivalent to the
size of the state of Campeche.
In Phantom Divers we are truly committed to the conservation of the environment
so we are very excited about all this new protected areas in the caribbean.
An excellent video of the new protected area in Quintana Roo: Biosphere of the Mexican Caribbean.
For this event we had the presence of Alejandro del Mazo Maza, commissioner of CONANMP, who is willing to collaborate with Saving Our Sharks in the management of the diving activity with the Bull Sharks, following the manual of good practices.
Every winter we receive a special visit in Playa del Carmen: The Bull Sharks.
During the bull shark season, every time that people go diving with the sharks, get a Saving Our Sharks bracelet. it's a donation of $5usd.
As many of us already know, the Saving Our Sharks association in Playa del Carmen is truly committed to the protection and conservation of the Bull Shark.This association has as main objectives the education, monitoring and tagging of sharks. This project helps to gather information to gain a better understanding of these species.
SHARK TAGGING
There are two types of tagging for sharks:
- Internal: requires capture, incision to insert and suture, later released.
- External: It is applied with a spear gun.
The transmitters send a signal that has a receiving radius of 500m to 1km. The receiver is located in specific places to know if the observed sharks are the same as they have been seen in previous years.
20 receivers are currently installed along the Mexican Caribbean coast.
This activities are really important because it is necessary to
continue collecting information for research purposes that will allow us
to understand them and work with them for their protection. These studies require expensive equipment and materials so it is very important to donate.
With information from Saving Our Sharks.
