WHY ARE SHARKS SO IMPORTANT?

Dear fellow divers, 

As you may already know, many people are still very scared of Sharks, thanks to some famous movies that contributed to their bad reputation. The truth is that they should be more scared of humans, than humans of them. Each year more than 100 million sharks are killed for their fins, and in many countries shark finning is still very common. Shark finning refers to the terrible practice of removing a shark´s fin while the shark is still alive, then the shark is discarded in the ocean again. Unable to swim they are condemned to die slowly of suffocation or eaten by other predators.

For these reasons, nowadays it´s becoming more and more difficult to see a shark while diving.

This is a cruel and wasteful practice that happens daily around the world being a terrible threat to the health of the ocean and the entire marine ecosystem, which is made up of very intricate food webs. Sharks are at the top of these webs; as apex predator they help by removing weak and sick fish as well as keeping the balance with competitors, helping to ensure species diversity.

They are considered to be the “keystone” species, which means that removing them will cause the entire structure´s downfall.

In Playa del Carmen, Phantom Divers collaborates with the association Saving our Sharks (SOS), with the main goal to know and protect our sharks, in order to keep our ocean as healthy as possible and raise awareness for these extremely important creatures. 

The main focus are the lords of the ocean that visit our waters every year and keep attracting tourists and divers from all over the world to the Mayan Riviera: the legendary Bull Sharks. For every dive you book with these magnificent creatures, you are given an orange bracelet representing your support and donation to SOS. So we would like to thank all the people that joined us this awesome season and see you back in November. 

Dive Fun - Dive Safe - Dive Phantom

Semarnat Delegate in Quintana Roo diving with the Bull Sharks at Phantom Divers.

On March 4th 2017, we had the honor of diving with Renan Sánchez at Phantom Divers who is the Delegate of Semarnat in Quintana Roo. He accompanied us on our legendary Bull Shark diving, so he had the opportunity to live this amazing experience. We talked about the marine life importance in the ecosystem, including the Bull Sharks that visit Quintana Roo every winter. He knows about the big efforts of Saving Our Sharks for the protection and conservation of the Bull Sharks, and is really proud of all the work done. 

Fishermen Cooperative Members diving with Bull Sharks

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.

Four protected areas announced in Cancun

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. 

 

Face-off in Antarctica

Sometimes it can be very surprising when wild animals, that we think are deadly predators, act in a caring, kind way with us, humans, who mostly are the principal reason of the suffering or even the extinction of several species. This happens with sharks, we kill several sharks due for fun or commerce and mostly because we think they simple presence is a danger, when actually, the only attacks reported by sharks have been by confusion or human threatening.

The National Geographic photographer, Paul Nicklen, went to Antarctica to photograph one of the top predators in the world, the leopard seal. And what happened next, can simply amaze anyone. Once he was face to face with this vicious predator and terrified by it, the animal dropped the penguin it had in the mouth, came closer to Paul and opened her mouth right away to his head and camera and took them "Her head is twice as wide as a grizzly bear's head. Just huge". Then she got a live penguin and started trying to feed him with it, when the penguin got away, she would do the same thing over and over again. Paul said she might notice in that moment that he was this useless and weak predator that can starve to dead and became quit panicked. So the seal started bringing him weak penguins and partially dead penguins pushing them into his camera, maybe thinking that it was his mouth. At some point she started bringing him some parts of the little animals. The next three days he went by to photograph her she acted the same way, feeding him so he didn't starve.

"So, here I came to Antarctica, to photograph this potentially vicious animal, to have this predator, this top predator in Antarctica, take care of me, and nature me, and feed me for four days straight.