Columbia

(Dive Travel Business News - October 23, 2011) -- Colombian environmental authorities have reported a huge shark massacre in the Malpelo wildlife sanctuary in Columbia's Pacific waters, where as many as 2,000 hammerhead, Galápagos and silky sharks may have been slaughtered for their fins.

A team of divers who were studying sharks in the region, reported the mass killing in the waters surrounding the rock-island known as Malpelo, some 500 kilometres from the mainland. The divers spotted 10 fishing trawlers “entering the zone illegally,” said a Colombian environmental official. All reportedly flew Costa Rican flags.

“When the divers dove, they started finding a large number of animals without their fins. They didn't see any alive,” the official said.  The shark kill estimate is based on calculating an average of 200 sharks per boat. read more »

(Dive Travel Business News - Sept 6, 2011) -- In an effort to combat drug-related violence, Trinidad has extended its sate of emergency (SOE) and curfew for three more months. A nightly 8-hour curfew was first imposed on Aug 21, 2011 in direct response to a wave of violent crime linked to drug trafficking that included the murder of 11 people over a 48-hour period. Government security forces had already been fighting the illegal drug trade, that culminated in a multi- million-dollar bust at the island's international airport in last month. 

Trinidad is a major transhipment point of cocaine. Colombian and Mexican drug dealers who had been fighting for drug turf locally were set to go on a bloodbath, following the seizure of cocaine worth $22 million at Piarco International Airport on August 16, five days before the declaration of the state of emergency. read more »