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Sharks are our national treasure a.k.a Egyptian Shark Week

The idea of Shark Week was developed in the 1980’s to counteract the anti-shark sentiments due to the famous movie Jaws and to promote the conservation of Sharks, especially Great White Sharks, and looking into sharks as a great source of wonder and reverence and not fear or havoc.

 

“Let’s catch them all big or small” A decision was made, late at night by high officials and a team was set to catch all the alleged shark(s) that caused the craze in 2010, a team of once-were-fishermen and enthusiastic park rangers set sail for the sea to bait sharks in the vicinity of the attacks and the famous places for shark observation, 27 sharks were caught only two of them were held accountable for the attacks, through the only way possible at then, open them up and have a looksee.

 The first was a short fin mako and the second one was an oceanic whitetip.

 

The Mako shark of 2010 Fin

One of the fishermen told me that most of the sharks he “opened” were starving and some of them even had trash in their stomachs. Which supports one of the theories formulated at then attributing the shark attacks to the scarcity in fish and prey items due to competition with unsustainable fishing practices, or the real culprit is an amalgamation of all of them theories, like for instance the sacrificed sheep chum in Eid Al-Adha attracted the sharks to the already poor-void-of-prey-items waters but the reef fishes would be easy to catch and sufficient for the sharks survival plus the nourishment or the tease of nourishment a shark may roam the vicinity of a certain dive centre that feeds chicken thighs to sharks in order to make dreams come true for shoestring travellers Jaws shot just for 1.99$.  

 

Oceanic Whitetip Shark in Marsa Alam
A school of Scaloped Hammerheads

Shark attacks happening in Australia are on the rise, maybe due to the problem with bleached reefs, water sport activities encroaching where the sharks are roaming, a change in the feeding behaviour of sharks due to the competition amongst different shark species over the same recourses, depletion of the fish stocks due to the fishing pressures or simply the associated crustacea and herbivore fish community with coral health, thus overall fish stock. Those factors should be taken into consideration to prevent any accident and possibly maximize on such national treasure, Sharks.