Bahamas-based conservationist Cristina Zenato is using education and advocacy to provide sanctuary for sharks and the marine ecosystems they inhabit.
“Obsession,” is how Cristina Zenato describes her love for the ocean. Her decision to put her studies in hospitality in Italy on hold at the age of 22 and spend a gap year exploring the waters of The Bahamas was the realisation of one of her childhood dreams.
“I was like, go diving with sharks for a year,” she recalls. “It’s going to be awesome. I thought I would come here, get a little bit of diving out of my system, and then go back to get a real job.”
Being fluent in several languages helped Zenato fulfill both dreams, gaining a full-time job in the hotel industry while diving in her spare time. But the hotel job did not last and the gap year evolved into a successful career as a dive professional, underwater cave explorer, educator and environmental advocate based in The Bahamas for the past 28 years.
Zenato is known as the “shark dancer” and “shark whisperer” for her remarkable rapport with animals perceived by many as threatening. “I think the main reason my connection with sharks felt easy is that I was never scared of them,” she says.
Italian-born Zenato attributes her ability to work so closely with sharks to the attitudes she was steeped in as a child and the respect for the ocean her parents passed to her. Childhood summers were spent by the ocean in Liguria, Sardinia, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria. Her mother was “a passionate swimmer” and her father an avid spearfisher and free diver. “There are no monsters in the sea, only the ones you make up in your head,” he told her.
These words have grown to epitomise the philosophy Zenato lives by and her mission to reduce the fear attached to sharks, which she has never understood, in order to protect these predatory fish.
Setting them free
When Zenato began diving in The Bahamas, she would often observe Caribbean reef sharks swimming with hooks embedded in their mouths and witness the pain and discomfort it caused them. She started to patiently develop an incredible bond of trust with the local sharks, gradually removing the hooks by hand and, over time, forged friendships with these creatures.
It took time to understand them, for them to understand me, for them to let me do that,” Zenato says.
Her work to remove the hooks spread by word-of-mouth from those who witnessed it, and gradually her actions attracted the attention of a global community. People were asking to accompany her on dive trips with the sharks to help remove the hooks. A YouTube video showing Zenato in action on animal lovers’ channel The Dodo has received upwards of 15.5m views since 2020.
“What I didn’t realise was this hook removal became symbolic,” Zenato says. It challenged preconceptions of sharks as “mindless killing machines”. People told her: “Wow, I didn’t even think sharks could suffer.”
In 2009, Zenato started a petition to protect sharks from commercial fishing operations and collected 25,000 signatures. This was used by the Pew Charitable Trust and Bahamas National Trust in their successful campaign to establish in 2011 the Bahamas Shark Sanctuary – an area covering 630,000 km2 of ocean.
Zenato sees her role in this as her biggest accomplishment and reminds anyone who feels powerless to help sharks and other wildlife that they too can make a difference.
“You have the power to change things for sharks,” Zenato says. “You don’t need to look at the other side of the world. Just do it where you are.”
Exploration, education, conservation
As well as her work with sharks, Zenato has another great underwater love – exploring the extensive cave systems of The Bahamas. She has not only surveyed known systems but in 2020 discovered two new ones with husband, Kewin Lorenzen, and likens these experiences to “swimming through the geological book of the planet”.
In one cave system, the tunnel was wide, but with a low ceiling. Zenato had to crawl between the ceiling and the bottom of the tunnel, grinding her scuba gear against the rocky walls, before she could push through and into what looked like huge rooms with decorations and shelves.
“Exploring caves fulfils, for me, a sense of discovery,” Zenato says.
She was amazed to discover how the limestone caves function like “the best Britta [water] filter you could ever desire”.
Using hand or electric pumps, locals access filtered rainwater located a few metres below ground via shallow hand-dug wells.
Zenato also noticed how much rubbish ends up in the caves, siphoned in from the ocean. “Plastic flows through the ocean in copious amounts; insane amounts,” she says.
Understanding how the caves work and sharing this information with others through education is central to protecting the natural wonders she loves, Zenato explains.
One way to do this is by raising awareness about how to dispose of rubbish in a way that minimises harm to the environment – cleaning up after yourself and reducing waste by recycling glass and plastic. She is motivating residents to adopt new behaviours that indirectly protect and conserve cave systems, the surrounding land and water areas, and the sea creatures closest to her heart, sharks.
The data her team collects during cave dives is donated to the Bahamas National Trust, which uses it to directly protect, through legislation, areas around the caves against infrastructure development or damage of any kind.
The idea of the discovery of the unknown is to make sure we appreciate it better,” she observes. “And we are better in tune with where we are and what we are doing. And to me, that then goes into the next part, which is education.”
Through People of the Water, a non-profit organisation she established in 2019, Zenato continues to work within her local community to respond to the numerous threats facing the environment, with a focus on local education. Although the sharks of The Bahamas are protected from commercial fishing, unsustainable fishing practices, illegal poaching and habitat degradation are impacting marine biodiversity, causing severe declines to populations of many species, including the spiny lobster and conch.
The funding the organisation receives enables Zenato to run free courses for Bahamians in diving and interacting with sharks. This offers them the chance to see the world from a different perspective and encourages them to consider following career pathways other than fishing, such as tourism, engineering, marine biology or teaching, she says.
“What is most rewarding is when you see the ‘Aha moment’ in somebody’s mind,” Zenato says. “When they surface to a new understanding, a discovery and sometimes, a new self…you can change the world one person at a time.”
Since Zenato’s arrival in The Bahamas, she has made a real difference to the natural wonders she has endeavoured to protect all her life, especially the sharks of these waters. She’s also inspired Bahamians and people worldwide to make change happen in their backyard – in support of the environment and its conservation – for a better future.
When asked if she is where she wants to be right now, Zenato says, “I am right where I want to be, while I am planning to expand where I want to be.”
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Article by Gabrielle Ahern