As an initial trial, last week, Bali Sharks moved four sharks, each with an average length of 1 meter, from a nursery they set up near Serangan in south Bali to a 3,000 hectare Marine Protected Area (MPA) off the Gili islands in Lombok. Bali Sharks is a marine conservation nursery, which saves sharks and puts them in a pontoon in Serangan’s water.
Paul Friese, founder of Bali Sharks, said that moving the sharks to Gili was expected to give them a safe home. Releasing the sharks in the MPA off Gili was considered safer than having them in Bali’s waters.
Bali Sharks rescued the sharks by buying them from local fishermen to prevent them being killed for their fins. They keep the young sharks until they are about 1.2 meters long, thus are old enough, smart and competent enough to able to stay in deeper water. So far, they had been able to save 57 sharks. Since the nursery was full, they have had to find a safe area to release the sharks. Teaming up with Gili Shark Foundation, they decided to release the sharks in the waters offthe Gili islands.
Gili Shark Foundation is an organization monitoring the shark population around the waters of the Gili islands to protect and conserve the sharks and their habitat. Steve Woods, founder of Gili Sharks Foundation, said that the foundation was established to provide a conservation haven for the sharks that had been rescued by Bali Sharks. Gili hase almost 3,000 hectares of no-go area. You can’t snorkel, dive, or fish there, purely in order to regenerate the reef and let the marine life get on with. The sharks will not be 100% safe, but it’s a lot safer than Bali. In the shark sanctuary, the foundation will build a tank to enable tourists to see and feed the juvenile sharks before the sharks are released into the wild.
Shark hunting in Bali’s seas has resulted in a depleting population, as suggested by a 2011 survey by Conservation International (CI) Indonesia. There were only three reef sharks found during 350 hours of diving during the survey. The NGO has suggested the provincial administration implement a regulation to create a shark sanctuary in Bali and outlaw the capture or killing of sharks in the island’s waters.
According to CI, Indonesia is the world’s biggest shark exporter, with 15 percent of the world’s sharks’ fins and manta ray gill plates coming from the country. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) places Indonesia in the highest ranking of the 20 largest countries in the shark fin trade.
In addition, the FAO also estimates that 90,000 tons of shark catch from long-line fishing in Indonesian waters goes unrecorded. Indonesia is a key exporter of sharks’ fins to external markets, such as Hong Kong, China and Singapore. The current level of shark catch is unsustainable, both economically and ecologically; within a few years many species of previously common sharks, such as the black tip shark, could become extinct.