By: Nader El-Sharkawy

nader@bizsharm.com

There is no doubt that what happened last month on the shores of Sharm el Sheikh when a Shark(s) attacked some  tourists was a sad situation but I don’t want to speak about the attacks themselves.
Instead, I would like to focus on the unprofessional reactions from all the relevant authorities and media without exception. Even Mr. Zakaria Azmi, the chief of the presidential staff and the deputy in Parliament, looks like he has
the same thoughts about the performance of the government, mirroring almost the same opinion when he criticized the silence of the Minister of Tourism, absence of the Minister of Environment and finally the hesitation of the Governor of  South Sinai about whether to open the beaches or not.
The attacks by themselves were not the real problem but the real problem began when we started to hear irresponsible responses and comments from people who had no idea what the reasons were that led to these attacks. At that time,
everyone became an expert on sharks and shark behaviour! Those people are the real reason for any impact that has taken or will take place on tourism in Sharm.
I was reading and listening to a lot of nonsense that made me do not know whether to laugh or cry. Crises can and do happen at any time and in any place in the world, no one can avoid it, but what makes countries civilized and others not is the way they respond to crises.
Since I moved to Sharm in the early nineties, I have shared with my fellows Sharmers many crises from earthquakes and floods to war against terror and terror attacks.
Every time we watch the low profile responses to these crises, we know that only we and nobody else will pay the price of these responses from our livelihood. Every country has something called crises management and, to define it well, let me explain what crises management is according to specialists. It is the process by which an authority deals with a
major event that threatens to harm the general public.
Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the public, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time. It can be also defined as a process of transformation where the old system can no longer be
maintained.”
Therefore, the fourth defining quality is the need for change. If change is not needed, the event could more accurately be described as a failure or incident.  In contrast to risk management, which I don’t even dream that we
will ever have, risk management involves assessing potential threats and finding the best ways to avoid those threats, whereas crisis management involves dealing with threats after they have occurred.
It is a discipline within the broader context of management consisting of skills and techniques required to identify, assess, understand, and mitigate a serious situation, especially from the moment it first occurs to the point that recovery procedures start.
Unfortunately none of what has been mentioned was applied to the way our relevant authorities are responding to crises. Let’s take the crises of the shark(s) attacks as an example to what I am talking about.
The Red Sea is known to everyone coming to the area for its Marine life, and Sharks have been living in it
even before humans existed. When we built this vast number of resorts and attracted millions of divers and
snorkelers in recent years didn’t we know that the confrontation will happen one day?
What did we do to be ready for it and to avoid a situation like this?.
Nothing…… What happened was that we just waited until the crisis took place and then we panicked because we
didn’t know the right measures to take to avoid the impacts. At the end of the day, we found someone
underestimated our common sense and who tells the media that Israel implanted an aggressive Shark
in Sharm’s shores by fixing a GPS device on the Shark! This guy was talking and didn’t know what GPS is.
Others thought that the shark is just like a suspect that they could arrest it and force it to confess then they would execute it. Then they opened the water activities the next day claiming that the water is safe when nature surprised them with another fatal attack to show them how unaware they were. This kind of announcement leads to damage
to our credibility in front of the international community.
I heard the governor of South Sinai say that he has his orders to enforce new regulations regarding building of  Monitoring towers on every hotel’s beach where trained divers will monitor any unusual movement in the sea and will have communication devises to send alarm to Zodiacs launched to secure the area. Then he totally banned feeding fish by tourists or divers.
Ok .. it sounds good but is his Excellency sure that when the guy sitting in the tower sees one of the
big plastic bags which anybody can find everywhere in our shores, the guy will not think it’s a Shark then he will start to scream and get the tourists out of the water?

Then they will find it was a false alarm. I wonder how many times this could happen per day? The other question is how his Excellency can be sure that the tourists will stop feeding the fish… here, I have a big doubt.
Whatever the measures they take to protect tourists they have to take other strong measures to protect
sharks from killing and, overall, the illegal fishing.
Oh .. I forgot to ask his Excellency how he will force the boats not to dump their waste in the sea….. Any
way we will not close this subject till it is permanently solved.

Safe Diving in Corals

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