Ethics Newsline®

ISLA HOLBOX, Mexico

Despite the title, this is not a column about competitive business practices. It’s actually about swimming with sharks — and about the ethical issues raised by ecotourism in the waters off the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula.

The animals in question — whale sharks, the world’s largest fish — aren’t easily found. Last week, a van from Cancún bounced us for three hours through the Mayan jungle, slowing for the topes or speed bumps at every village until it dead-ended at Chiquilá. Another half hour in a basic fishing boat brought us to the pier at Holbox (pronounced OLE-bosh), where a government official verified that both the captain and the guide were registered for this adventure.

Thirty miles and ninety minutes later, well out of sight of land but on a sand shelf so shallow we could almost see the bottom, the captain began searching for these slow-moving, unaggressive animals. Some forty of them, he told us, were in the area. Whale sharks grow to immense lengths — the ones we found were about forty feet long — and can live up to 150 years. They feed on small crustaceans, fish, and squid, as well as on plankton, sieving seawater through baleen-like filters as they float near the surface, their white-speckled gray bodies undulating gently beneath the shark family’s trademark triangular dorsal fin.

For as long as anyone at Holbox can remember, whale sharks have been returning each summer to this small patch of ocean where the pale green Gulf of Mexico meets the darker blue of the Caribbean. They’re drawn here by the upwelling of food-filled water hitting an underwater cliff and rising suddenly to the surface. But only in the last few years have they drawn the attention of tourists. The reason: So docile are these great beasts, and so curious are they about visitors, that you can don masks and snorkels, slip over the side, and swim for minutes on end within touching distance of their hides.

And therein hangs the dilemma. With no need for teeth and no predators but man, whale sharks seem to have developed no defense beyond a slow sinking dive into the shallows. Hunted for food and (like whales) for oil, they were headed for extinction before they were added to the list of protected species. And until recent efforts by the Mexican government, the World Wildlife Federation, and local nonprofits imposed tighter regulations against deliberately touching or harassing the animals, snorkelers would grab a fin and let the sharks pull them along. Now the regulations strictly limit the number of guides and captains. All are based in Holbox, not Cancún, bringing much-needed economic development to the poor fishing villages in this region.

Swimming just off the port side of the six-foot jaw of a living shark is, under any circumstances, enough to concentrate the mind. In those few sunlit minutes when it was my turn, I found myself uneasy — not from any fear for my safety, but from a more unsettling question: Should I be here? Is this the right thing to be doing to — and for — these animals?

To be sure, the regulations are clearly written. The guides assured us that the animals were not stressed by our presence. But the captain did on occasion maneuver his 75-horse outboard in an effort to direct the whale shark back toward the swimmers. And our presence alongside the feeding animal eventually seemed cause enough for him to slide beneath the surface until we had returned to the boat. So you can make a powerful moral case for banning the practice of shark swimming.

Yet there’s no doubt that what we saw and experienced in the presence of these rare animals created a sense of awe and respect — and a powerful desire to help protect them. Like so many of the world’s voiceless, they have no constituency to lobby for their defense. Like me, few readers of this column have, I suspect, ever even heard of such animals. What will make them want to pay to see them? Yet without the potential revenue stream from fascinated tourists, would any ecotourism operator — especially the sadly large number that put the emphasis on the last rather than the first part of that term — have organized a tour that would have captured the attention of the hotel that recommended it to us? You can make a powerful case that, if the practice is banned, these amazing creatures will find themselves in competition with far more popular environmental causes for the public’s attention.

So maybe, after all, this column is about competitive business practices — and about jobs versus sharks, development versus conservation, and man’s role on the planet. Next year, they say, snorkelers may be banned, leaving tourists with only binoculars rather than face masks to make the grueling trip. Will they care enough to do it?

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics