DIAN FOSSEY established a personal relationship with the mountain gorillas she studied, and Jane Goodall achieved something similar with the chimpanzees of Gombe. At first the apes shied away from her, but she didn't give up. She began by observing them with binoculars and gradually reduced the distance until the chimpanzees admitted her into their intimacy. She tells it herself in her biography: "Day after day, sun, wind or rain, I go up into the hills. This is where I was meant to be. And Cristina Zenato could sign the same thing about her relationship with the Nassau reef sharks.
At last I had before me the woman I had so far only intuited under a chainmail suit. We immediately hit it off. I declared my admiration for her work and how excited I was to meet her. We talked as we put on our gear and on the way to the dive site, and before entering the water, I proudly told her about my feat of leaving a tiger shark upright for a few seconds. She then gave me a half smile and told me that she had left a coral shark motionless for fifteen minutes (it is clear that comparisons are odious...).
Her usual dive site was next to a twelve-meter wreck at a depth of about twenty meters. Almost as soon as she reached the bottom, Cristina found herself surrounded by a swarm of sharks that swarmed around her. Slowly, without ever losing her composure, she began to take pieces of fish out of the blue tube she was carrying to give them in her mouth to the shark she considered. It was truly an absolute balancing act in a storm of fins.
But suddenly the situation took a turn. Cristina put aside the tube with the bait and knelt down on the sandy bottom. The sharks kept passing close by, but instead of feeding them she stroked them, scratched their backs, touched their noses gently, and they swam slower and slower, some practically stopped when they were at her level, and two even landed on the ground and rested their heads against her lap. The spectacle was tender and wonderful, she was living live what she had seen so many times in her famous -Malagueña Salerosa- video.
After a few minutes, he focused on one of the specimens that had been lying down and began to caress its nose with a circular motion of his thumb, and soon after he stood up holding the animal by the dorsal fin while he continued caressing it. Finally, in a show of control, she lifted it by the tail and left it completely upright on her right hand as if holding a violin.
When we got out of the water I congratulated her energetically. Then she, seeing my happy and enthusiastic face, suggested that we continue chatting about sharks at her house over a cup of coffee. An occasion that, besides being an honor, I could not miss.
C:”Soy italiana, aunque nací y me crié en el Congo”, me contó en cuanto nos sentamos a la mesa, ”pero a estas alturas me siento más de Bahamas que de ningún otro lugar. Esta es mi casa, yo la he elegido.” Y siguió narrándome su vida en relación a los tiburones: curiosidad al principio, interés y amor al fin, identificándome totalmente porque me parecía estar oyendo mi propia historia.
K: "How did you find the method to stop them?" I asked him at a moment when the conversation turned to the techniques he had learned underwater.
C:”Por casualidad” respondió ella con modestia.
C:”Ya has visto como se acercan cuando hay comida, es fácil acariciarlos pero son muy nerviosos, y en una ocasión me di cuenta de que cambiaban de actitud si les tocaba el morro. Parecía que retenían la marcha para prolongar el contacto conmigo, de algún modo sentí que les provocaba una sensación placentera. Deduje que probablemente ese contacto creara algún tipo de estímulo de los impulsos electromagnéticos generados en las ampollas de Lorenzini .”
K: "But I have seen some sharks already approaching very slowly before you touched them, even a couple of them have laid down in your lap without prior contact."
C:”Sí, claro”, afirmó esbozando una media sonrisa.
C:“La técnica funciona, así es como empezó todo, pero a estas alturas yo creo que hay algo más”.
K:”¿A qué te refieres con algo más?”, Cristina bajó la voz.
C:”A que los tiburones me conocen.” Creo que abrí mucho los ojos como señal de sorpresa.
K:”¿Y tú los conoces a ellos?”
C:”¿Cómo no los voy a conocer? Los veo a diario, a algunos desde hace más de ocho años, los conozco a casi todos. Incluso distingo el carácter de cada uno y de qué humor están.” Miré a Cristina con admiración y debió leer mis pensamientos, porque dijo:
C:”No hay mucho secreto en esto, Karlos, créeme. Si visitas el mismo sitio ciento treinta veces al año, conoces a todos los animales, y ellos te conocen a ti. Ten en cuenta que bajo siempre con comida, los alimento, los ayudo, y ellos lo saben. Entre nosotros se han establecido lazos de afecto, de amistad, de confianza. Existe una verdadera relación, ese es el secreto.”
I listened to her and wanted to believe her words, but it still sounded irrational to me to hear about bonds of affection, friendship and trust between a human and a shark.
K:”¿Qué quieres decir con que los ayudas?” Cristina salió un momento de la habitación y volvió con una caja que contenía más de cuarenta anzuelos de gran tamaño y me dijo
C:”Mira, todos se los he quitado yo con mis propias manos.”
K:”¿De la boca?”
C:”Sí, claro. Bueno, alguno de otros sitios, pero la mayoría de la boca.”
K:”¿Y no te afectan las críticas que dedican algunos naturalistas a los que dan de comer a los tiburones?” Cristina sonrió, pero esa vez su sonrisa pareció una mueca.
C:”Si yo no atrajera a los tiburones alimentándolos, nunca les habría podido liberar de estos anzuelos.”
K:”Ya, pero esos naturalistas mantienen que toda intromisión en su medio implica algún modo de destrucción. A mí me llovieron golpes de todas partes cuando intenté practicar la inmovilidad tónica con los tigre.” Cristina se encogió de hombros y cerró suavemente la caja de los anzuelos.
C:”Siempre habrá quien critique. Hagas lo que hagas, nunca le gustará a todo el mundo. Pero en mi opinión, el único modo de conocer a los tiburones, y ayudarles, es acercarse a ellos lo más que podamos, y la mejor forma de que la gente los acepte es que pueda verlos de cerca y deje de temerlos.”
K:”¿Tú crees que se podría llegar a manejar a un tiburón tigre como a un coralino?”
C:”No lo sé. Hay una enorme diferencia de tamaño y por lo que cuentas no responden igual a las caricias en el morro, pero si quieres mañana bajamos juntos, pruebas con los coralinos, te enseño a alimentarlos y tú mismo ves las diferencias.”
It was a long wait for me... The next day he provided me with a full mesh suit, like his, we chatted on the deck of the boat about how the feeding technique was and after that, we entered the water.
I descended slowly, and once at the bottom I took off my fins, stood up and settled my weight between my two legs. Then Cristina handed me the cylinder with the fish. Immediately I was surrounded by about twenty sharks pushing each other and pushing me, and not only sharks, around me there was a ball of fish of all sizes that prevented me from seeing more than twenty centimeters from my nose. It was clear to me the reason for wearing the mesh suit, in that maelstrom it was easy to get a bite. There was a moment when I almost felt claustrophobic, but I took a deep breath and managed to control my nerves. I waited until the sharks calmed down a bit before I took my first piece of fish. I knew I had to be clear about which specimen it was meant for, because if one piece of bait drifts away they all go for it without hesitation.
I picked the lucky one that swam in the right direction and at the right height and slid my hand between the rubber cylinder cover. I dug my heels into the sand, bent my knees a little more, held the piece of fish tightly and pulled it out decisively when the chosen shark was less than a meter away. Satisfied, I was about to release it in front of its head when a huge grouper snatched it out of my hand. It took me half a dozen attempts to calculate the speed of the shark and the optimal time to release it, but in the end I succeeded.
The second part of the dive was even more exciting. I knelt down, put the cylinder with the bait to the side to keep them interested in me and started touching them as I had seen her do, even stroking their snouts, but at first I didn't notice them holding back. Cristina was telling me with gestures not to force them, but I was having a hard time controlling my anxiety. After a while I managed to get some of them to stop, and although they didn't end up landing on me, I was more than satisfied...
Learning more about sharks and tonic immobility with Cristina Zenato was an honor. I realized many things, above all I ratified my theory that to be able to research about them you have to have "contact" and that this, even if you use bait, is not bad as some people say. Besides sharing with Cristina a coffee, a couple of dinners, several dives and many talks about sharks, we also shared the same point of view about these fabulous animals.
