An island as beautiful as paradise, but tourists are afraid of shark attacks

The island of Réunion is a French overseas territory located in the Indian Ocean, famous for its beautiful beaches but at the same time it is also home to some of the world's top sharks and frequent shark attacks. human labor.

Dan Duane, author of the podcast 'Réunion: Shark Attack at Paradise Island', said the number of bull sharks increased rapidly in this area between 2011-2019.

When asked about the number of sharks crawling around Réunion Island, Mr. Duane said estimates range from 300 to 3,000 individuals.

Shark warning sign on Réunion island.

The number of shark attacks is so frequent that swimming and surfing in many areas around the island have been banned.

Sometimes, shark attacks happen because tourists intentionally swim in restricted areas and are warned of sharks. For example, the case of French tourist Kim Mabouli was killed by a shark while surfing in the island's no-swim zone in 2019.

Authorities carry the body of a tourist who died after being attacked by a shark on the island of Réunion.

Along the island's roughly 30km coastline, 11 people have been killed and eight others seriously injured by shark attacks since 2011. Even so, the island of Réunion still attracted a record 500,000 visitors in 2017.

Explaining why the waters around the island are so densely populated with sharks, experts believe that this place is on the route this fish travels between Australia and South Africa. In addition, the island's ban on the sale of shark meat also makes shark hunting unpopular, so that the number of these animals around Réunion Island does not decline.

Réunion Island is experimenting with a method of creating barriers around swimming areas to keep out sharks.

Indigenous people have devised a solution to make the marine environment around the island safer for tourists and reduce the number of sharks through traps. Mr. Duane said this is a large bait that is anchored on the seabed. When biting the bait, the shark will be entangled here. At this point, a fisherman will receive a notification and go to the trap area and shoot the shark.

In the event that another fish is caught in a trap, the animal will be released. With this method, natives on the island of Réunion have exterminated 135 sharks since 2014.

However, around this measure, there are still many controversial opinions such as whether to kill sharks or not? Killing sharks can help reduce attacks on people.

According to Mr. Duane, perhaps this measure seems to have worked when the last shark attack occurred from 2019.

Local people also tried to set up an underwater barrier to prevent sharks from accessing swimming and surfing areas, but it was not too effective because this animal has an aggressive attack.