Blame it all on Spielberg and his colossal “Jaws”. It was the year 1975.
And in almost half a century, a lot of shark meat, the “very bad” animal, has passed through our tables. With the complicity of Spain and Italy: the largest importers of shark meat.
“We find it in supermarkets, under false names, frozen: it goes from ‘Vitello di mare’ to ‘Gattuccio’, passing through ‘Spinarolo’ and many others,” says Andrea Spinelli, 33, a marine biologist at the Oceanographic Institute of Valencia, who, with his brother Marco, 28, a photographer and documentarian, has made “Shark Preyed”, a 50-minute documentary shot in Spain and Italy. There is no law in Europe to protect shark fishing quotas, as has been done for tuna: the goal of our work is to change the perception of the danger of sharks,” explains the Sicilian biologist, originally from Caltanissetta.
“But do you know how many people die each year because of sharks? Just over a dozen: nothing compared to the three thousand killed by dogs, or the five thousand killed by elephants,” say the Spinelli brothers, focused on presenting the good side of sharks.
To prove it, they immersed themselves in the waters of Bermeo, in Spain, without a protective cage, surrounded by about ten smoothhounds. The final stage is a return to Valencia, to the Oceanographic Institute (one of the stops on our planned trip in February, where Andrea will be among the guests, editor’s note), where we witness the hatching of eggs in an aquarium, and then release the very small specimens of smoothhound sharks into the sea.
A message of hope for an animal that has been able to live for 400 million years and withstand four mass extinctions. *Corriere della Sera is also on Whatsapp.
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5th February 2024 (modified on 5th February 2024 | 15:28)
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