Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BULL SHARKS: A TALE OF OVERFISHING
There was a time when the people of Lago de Nicaragua, then called Cocibolca ('Sweet Sea' in
Náhuatl), did not learn how to swim. From the gulf of the Río San Juan to Granada's shores, the
bull shark ruled these waters, and had a taste for human flesh.
Carcharhinus leucus
is among the Caribbean's most ferocious sharks, not enormous but
strong, with an appetite for anything terrestrial that might fall into its realm. Its small eyes, adap-
ted to the silty water of the river mouth, are useless, but it can smell blood from 100m away. Its
flattened tail fin is perfect for the punishingly shallow rapids of rivers which it, unlike any other
shark, can penetrate well inland.
All sharks can modify salts in their bloodstream, to sink and float at will, but the bull shark
alone can urinate these salts away as it heads upstream, and find equilibrium in places where they
are not expected.
The shark, always itself hunted, became a major cash earner as the 20th century began. By the
1930s Chinese buyers were paying as much as US$70 a kilogram for the fins, a legendary 'restor-
ative.' As the market grew, Nicaraguans found buyers for the shark's liver, rich in vitamin A, and
the skin, which can be prepared as fine leather. This shark's meat, however, rotted too quickly to
export - the bulk of this brutal catch was ground into fertilizer or dog food, or simply thrown
away.
In 1969 the Somoza family decided to take full advantage of this 'renewable' natural resource,
and built a shark-processing plant in Granada. By some estimates, 20,000 sharks flowed through
it during its decade of operation. More than 100 boats fed the facilities, even as the sharks be-
came rarer, perhaps endangered, and ever more difficult to catch. The revolution coincided with
this unprofitable decline, and the entire operation was shut down in 1979. It has never recovered.
These days, bull-shark sightings are a rare occurrence. Some locals say that they lurk out in the
deep waters, far from the shoreline, others say that the only colonies left are around the entrance
to the Río San Juan.
Now that the shark has no natural predators, it's possible that the population will make a
comeback. And you have to wonder, as you swim these once-forbidden waters, if they remember
the taste of what was once their favorite meal.
A great book about Nicaraguan bull sharks is the page-turner
Savage Shore: Life and Death
with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters,
by the amazing Edward Marriot.
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Isla de Ometepe
POP 29,800
Ometepe never fails to impress. Its twin volcanic peaks, rising up out of Lago de Ni-
caragua, have captured the imagination of everyone from precolonial Aztec descendents
(who thought they'd found the promised land) to Mark Twain (who waxed lyrical about it
