POLICE have recorded four shark attack cases in the North so far with three from Buca Bay and Taveuni including a fatal attack in the Wailevu West waters.
Police spokeswoman Naina Ragigia said they recorded one death out of the four reported attacks, the one death coming after a gruesome attack on a villager at Wailevu West Coast, Cakaudrove.
And this has triggered a warning from the roko tui Bua’s office calling on people to think about these attacks and refrain from fishing in marine protected areas along the Kubulau area.
Roko tui Bua, Rupeni Kunaturaga said most of the recorded and unrecorded cases of shark attacks in the Kubulau Wainunu area involved those who were poaching in tabu areas.
Meanwhile, roko tui Cakaudrove Filimoni Naiqumu said his office was not aware of incidents where fishermen have stopped fishing out of fear for being bitten by sharks.
Meanwhile, Namena Island Resort, off Savusavu has rubbished rumours in the Cakaudrove area regarding a cage of Great White Sharks belonging to the resort that allegedly broke open during Severe TC Winston.
The resort’s Human Resources officer Amos Simpson said the rumours were all baseless as the resort did not have any shark cage at all. Mr Simpson said the resort had, however, tried to implement the shark feeding model that was adopted by the Beqa Shark Dive on Viti Levu in the resort.
“However, we could not survive long into the project because we ran out of fish head supplies used to feed the sharks,” he said.
“The fish head trade was all taken by the Beqa Shark Dive therefore the project was an outlived one.”
Mr Simpson said because of the enormous size of the sharks they could not be kept in cages and to keep a school of them would be difficult.
Rumour mills incited fear in fisher folk in the Buca Bay area who claim they fear going fishing because of the spate of shark attacks that took place on the neighbouring island of Taveuni.
