(English) The endangered lifeline of Madagascar’s sharks

Nosy Andranambala, Madagascar – It’s 40 years this year since the first Jaws film came out. The Hollywood blockbuster and its sequels traumatised generations of cinema-goers with tales of vengeful predators stalking the shallows, baying for human blood.

But in the 1970s, around Madagascar – the world’s fourth-largest island – the waters were so full of sharks that parents really did have to tell their children that it wasn’t safe to go swimming.

“My dad used to say: ‘Don’t go far from the village because there are many sharks’,” remembers Lydia Lamy, who grew up in Andavadoaka, a village that is now home to roughly 3,500 people and is around an eight-hour drive from the south-western city of Toliara.

Lamy was so scared of being bitten that she would go swimming only at low tide.

‘Fish is the only currency’

Now, she lives 12km out to sea on the tiny, barren island of Nosy Andranambala, where a cluster of metre-high huts offer the only shade.

She allows her small children to cool off in the crashing navy-blue waters surrounding them, because times have changed since Lamy was a child. With around 100 million sharks killed every year, in Madagascar, people’s fears are now focused on the survival of the vanishing species.
“There were many sharks near here but they’ve all gone. You have to go far from the island to get them now, and only at night,” says Lamy, whose face is painted bright yellow with ground-up bark mixed with cream to protect it from the sun.

After tenderly patting the belly of the dead shark that her husband has brought in from pre-dawn fishing, she slices off the fins as the dry skin around it shines and crinkles like a cheap suit. Cutting open its belly reveals six pups that are so well formed at three months that they resemble bath toys.

Everyone knows that catching pregnant sharks is a bad idea, as they reproduce slowly, and there’s a policy of throwing back those found alive on lines or in nets. But on this barren island, which is “completely full” with its 160 inhabitants, this gesture would come at a high cost. This community is among the world’s most impoverished, and for them “fish is the only currency”.
Once Lamy has dried and salted the meat, the family will get 10,000 ariary, around $2.50, for this shark from collectors who come to the island and never negotiate on the price. The family’s monthly income is $20 to $50, depending on the luck of the nets and lines in waters that islanders observe rapidly emptying.