A dive tour leader and marine wildlife filmmaker has shared the heartbreaking moment he photographed a mutilated tiger shark while diving in the Maldives.
Footage captured during those moments has since gone viral on Instagram, reminding us of the importance visual media, especially immersive video, can play in raising awareness of conservation issues.
Xabi Romero, an Argentinian-Spanish photographer, was diving at Fuvahmulah, a single-island atoll and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve located in the southern Maldives.
As he and a fellow diver, who was also operating a camera, meandered above the coral-covered seafloor close to the surface, a seemingly odd-looking shark glided past.
After a few moments, Romero realized that this was no uncommon species, but a tiger shark whose fins had been cut off, the videographer said in an Instagram post.
“This is the saddest encounter of my life,” Romero captioned his Instagram video depicting the meeting. “That was kind of bottom for me,” he wrote in the video description.
Watch: Xabi Romero's heartbreaking encounter with Fin, the tiger shark whose fins were cut off by fishermen
According to Romero, the shark, known somewhat ironically yet sadly as Fin, is a juvenile female tiger shark previously seen by other divers. Romero explained that Fin was caught by fishermen and all but the top part of her caudal fin had been cut off before she was thrown back into the ocean “to let her die.”
This practice is known as shark finning, and fishermen do it to sell the sharks’ fins for high profits while saving limited storage space on their boats. Shark fins are a highly prized ingredient for shark fin soup, a delicacy and status symbol across several Asian countries, including China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Conservation groups widely condemn shark finning as a cruel, wasteful, and destructive practice that is driving many shark species toward extinction.
The Maldives has strict shark fishing regulations, including a total ban on catching tiger sharks and finning any shark species. And while the authorities aim to enforce these rules by, for example, having registered commercial vessels carry GPS tracking devices, some fishing crews are able to skirt the law.
Romero went on to explain that he returned to the site where he spotted Fin, hoping to get a second glimpse of the brutalized shark. “I became obsessed with photographing Fin. Seeing her for the first time made me so sad, and I felt like that was a feeling worth sharing,” he said.
According to the photographer, he went on to make a print of the shark and sold copies of it, donating part of the proceeds to shark conservation. Romero didn't, however, clarify how much he donated or which conservation initiatives benefited.
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