Jez Flores: “There’s nothing left to eat but surfers!”

Sharks cost Reunion Island $36 million, says new report… 

Tourists getting their legs bitten off and subsequently dying on the beach is ruining tourism on that Indian Ocean-Franco paradise, Reunion Island. Y’ain’t seen anything like this Creole version of Tahiti, with its volcano and reef passes and exceptional boulangeries.

And the people! Some dark, some light, most possessing some beguiling physical characterstic, blue eyes popping out of choco skin, for instance.

But ever since a marine sanctuary was created in 2007, the bull sharks have taken hold of the ocean.

“From generation to generation there were always fishermen and then people from overseas, environmentalists, came and they stopped fishing in a 10-kilometre area where all the shark attacks are now happening,” explains the Reunion-born surfer Jeremy Flores. “That was eight years ago. By the time they stopped fishing the sharks didn’t have anything to fear anymore so they started coming and now it’s dead territory. They ate everything. There is no more life. There is no more turtles. There is no more fish. No more nothing. No more reef sharks. Because the bull sharks have eaten everything. And now, because there’s nothing left to eat, it’s the surfers”

And according to a report submitted to the Department for the Environment, Physical Planning and Housing (IEB), the island has lost $US36 million in tourism over the past three years.

Money? Yeah, you can wear it if it starts to improve.

It isn’t improving and it it won’t.

I mean, who wants to go to Reunion Island when swimmers, surfers and divers are being killed metres from the shore?

Does there come a point when sharks, in this case the bouldogue, are recognised as fish and not some mystical super creature? And are treated accordingly? ie. served as delicious steaks in beachfront restaurants.

(Can you read French? Here’s the source for BeachGrit’s story.)