Swimming With The Sharks: Interview With Vivian Toro, One Of Stuart Cove's Female Shark Feeders

From an article posted on Underwater Times:

NASSAU, That Bahamas -- One of the few things you won’t see on the average person's resume, even dive resume, is 'Shark Feeder.' Yet everyday, one of Stuart Cove's dive staff does just that. Under the watchful eye of Stuart Cove and his senior Shark Adventure program leaders, Marc Taggart and Tohru Yamaguchi, a team of four women and three men (probably the largest shark feeding staff in the world) swim with, carefully feed and control the sharks every day off Nassau. In the coming months, we are going to interview some of our actual feeders and give you, our industry partners and friends, a snapshot into the life of actual shark feeders at Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas.

Our interview is with Vivian Toro, of Puerto Rico. Vivian, . . . What do you hope your guests will take away from the feeding experience?

"I look at the afternoon (as shark dives are scheduled in the afternoons) as a whole experience. The shark feed takes about 30 minutes in the water, but I strive for making the whole trip experience a day to remember and try to educate our guests about how amazing the sharks really are. Truly these animals are at the top of the food chain in the ocean. However, many people think that our sharks are trained or somehow tame. They are anything but. However, they are also very misunderstood. Even though our guests get a small glimpse of how fierce a shark can be when they bite down on the bait and their teeth extend for a fraction of a moment, sharks need our protection. Once you have been in an “intimate” face-to-face experience, you can appreciate their beauty and the need to protect and preserve these amazing animals. That is what I hope our guests leave with at the end of the experience."