Brazil’s dangerous beaches where tourists search for sharks

A selfie with the flags and “Danger” notice, a printed t-shirt, a fridge magnet or a shark-shaped key ring divides the space in the tourist town of Recife, Brazil, where more and more tourists come to its beaches in search of sharks.

The shark attacks on the urban beaches of Recife, Boa Viagem, Piedade and Candeias, they have been repeated with some frequency for three decades, but despite the warnings and prohibitions of the authorities, the number of curious tourists are increasing more and more.

Most of them attacks, including the last two July, occurred near the church in the Piedade district, a Carmelite chapel practically built by the sea in the municipality of Jaboatao dos Guararapes, in the metropolitan area of ​​Recife and in close to the international airport.

The attacks began to be recorded in sequence from 1992, but the first of which there are official records occurred nearly five decades earlier, in 1947, when a younger brother residing in the church decided on his day of rest to take a bath in the sea ​​and was fatally bitten by a shark.

In the early 1990s the attacks reappeared as a nearby slaughterhouse threw the blood from slaughtering cattle into the sea and this attracted sharks. Despite the fact that the place is no longer functioning, the the presence of sharks was already inevitable and the situation worsened with port remodeling by Suape.

Various studies suggest that the the natural habitat of sharks has been affected With the expansion of the port, currently the main in the state of Pernambuco and one of the largest in the country, animals began to search the beaches of neighboring Recife for food and, in the case of females, to spawn. .

Special memories

With high tide and heavy rains hitting the state capital of Pernambuco (northeast) these days, authorities in Jaboatao dos Guararapes have Bathers are prohibited from entering Piedade beach and rescuers, metropolitan guards, firefighters, rescuers and police take charge of the surveillance of the premises.

However, taxis, mobile application transport cars, minibuses and tourist buses constantly make stops in front of the tourist church in which visitors, in addition to the photographic record in front of the religious building, do not miss the opportunity. to take a picture with the dangerous notice.

Piedade beach drink and sandwich vendor Guilherme Augusto said new tourists are making a pilgrimage to the beach “know where (the attack) took place“.

This is the case of the tourist Thais Leao, originally from the Amazonian state of Pará, who admitted that despite the “fear” of approaching the beach, she kept “taking risks” to take photos by the sea just in the same spot where the last two attacks took place.

For travel agency Verónica Veve, “there is now a demand in almost all excursions and tourist walks to go through ‘shark beach'”.

In the traditional Boa Viagem Square, or one permanent craft market, shark keychains are always out of stock and the best-selling t-shirt is the one that features a hungry shark with sharp teeth stamped with messages alluding to a character who is already part of Recife’s everyday life.

“Tourists looking for items always want a shark symbol and there isn’t a single keychain as they are all sold. They don’t like any bottle opener other than the shark,” he said. craftsman Rómulo Ramos.

Waldheim García Montoya / EFE