So right before I headed to Porto de Galinhas, I had a brief day stop in Recife to meet up with my friend. Recife is known for its diving but mostly for its sharks! Everyone I've talked to in Brazil when I ask them about sharks says, "Oh, Recife, that's where all the sharks are located." Naturally I headed to the beach soon after I arrived to see if I could see the sharks myself. So right away on the beaches there are huge signs saying- Danger, sharks are present here. You are at a greater risk of shark attack by entering these waters.
How absolutely crazy is that? They have multiple signs in multiple different languages. Surfing isn't permitted because of all the sharks. I think to myself, what makes all the sharks come to Recife? And is this really true? Or is this heresy? Do shark populations really inhabit these waters in higher numbers?
Perhaps this is why the boats are named after a religious tone here? No, the truth of the matter is that there is a fairly large river that empties our near Recife. Upstream from the river there are lots of farms. Back in the day, and it's unclear to me how far back we are talking (5,10,20,100 years?) the cattle farmers upstream used to kill the cattle and dump the dead carcasses and blood into the river. These lovely items would travel downstream and empty out into the ocean, thus calling the sharks to this local for a scrumptious feast. This behavior became ingrained in the sharks and even though the farmers have changed what they do with the bodies, rumor has it there is still an unusually large population of sharks in Recife. So I decided to have a chat with some of the lifeguards to see check on the inside scoop. I found out that there were 4 shark attacks last year on the main beach, Boa Viagem in Recife. No one died from these attacks (whew!). The lifeuards had seen a shark swimming around withim 100 meters of the beach just this morning. And we also found out that if there was a shark attack right here right now, the lifeguards would do nothing. Wait until it was all over and then proceed. I'm not sure if that is somehow reassuring.....i.e. who really wants to get in the water during a shark attack, even if your job is to save someone.....or whether that's scary. I mean it's their job....their lifeguards! One more shark fact from Recife, there are three types of sharks (according to the lifeguards) that inherit the area, the lemon shark, nurse shark and bull shark. However, performing a google scholar search on sharks in Recife turned up quite a larger number of shark species including the smalltail shark, blue shark, sharpnose shark and blacknose shark. I hunted around for a while but I couldn't find a scientific article stating whether shark populations were actually higher here than in other parts of Brazil or whether the occurrence of attacks is higher because perhaps this is an area where sharks and humans overlap with their habitat use.
A recent article, entitled "A Shark Attack Outbreak off Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil: 1992-2006", published in 2008 in the Bulletin of Marine Science, states that there were 47 incidents during this time with 17 fatalities. Most victims were male surfers with the peak time for attacks in July. One interesting tidbit was that no attacks were recorded on Wednesdays. (I know when I'm planning my next snorkel trip to Recife!) The article goes on to say that the buildling of a port, just south of this area and it's environmental degradation may have displaced the sharks from their native habitat into other areas with a larger human presence. BBC does a pretty good job explaining shark attacks in Recife.
Another interesting environmental problem they had in Recife's main beach was erosion! Yes Jennie Dean your master's project has implications for what Brazilians could be doing down here in Recife!
So as you can see by this picture, at high tide, the waves come right up to the sea wall. What used to be a prime area of large beach expanse has eroded away to no sand at high tides. Shoreline erosion, which occurs on both exposed and sheltered coasts, occurs primarily through the action of currents and waves, but sea level (tidal) change can also play a role. It seems as though everywhere I look from North Carolina, to Nantucket, to even Recife, Brazil, entire coastlines are slip sliding away into the sea through erosion. We as humans often build jetties, sea walls, groins, sand bags or other elaborate devices to stop erosion from affecting our coastal areas. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. I briefly attempted to dig a little into coastal erosion policy in Brazil and was met with a few too many high level papers and websites in Portuguese for this to be a quick study to write about in this blog. I'm going to have to do a little bit of research and get back to you on it....but seeing those sandbags in Recife made me wonder how Brazilian's are trying to deal with their coastal erosion problem, the successes and failures they've had with these policies and whether there is anything to be learned by Brazil or by the US from what the other has done to combat these problems.
If anyone knows a few good papers on this please pass them along my way. Learning about the sharks in Recife and seeing the signs for myself was pretty cool. I wish I had had enough guts to go for a swim (don't worry Mom, I wasn't THAT crazy.....).............perhaps next time : )
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