new boat feels…
August 2024, as we speak, our manager is in the process of training our new boat and introducing them to the rules of Project Hiu for their first month in tourism… we don’t usually hire three boats a month but with your donations and our merch sales we have been able to hire new boats into our fleet and take them away from shark fishing…
The first day on the job involves giving the crew their new shirts, reading the rules and inspecting the boat. This will be the first time any of them have worked with tourists and it will be up them and our interns to run the trips and care for everyones safety this month, a role our crew takes very seriously…
This boat wasn’t easy to hire, In 2019 a small youtube crew from overseas documented this boat fishing sharks. It’s something that we have done in the past too, expect when we did it, we had years of trust and relationship building behind us. The video they released from the trip documented some fishing practices that when exposed, caused issues for the boat within the community. Fast forward a few years and this vessel is skittish, in turn they made it clear to us that they never wanted to work with outsiders again.
It’s been a process of slowly gaining their trust that’s lead to a meeting with them. A meeting in which we pledged that our intentions were to give them a job, not expose or stop their old one…. That’s when they signed the contract, and we welcomed boat number 7 to the fleet.
Even though we have ten boats, each patiently awaits a turn on our roster. Making August the first month of work for them… Unfortunately, we don’t yet have enough funding to hire them all every month, but with your only donations, we have enough to do more this year than we ever have.
New boat new crew…
Our manager Madyson, training our new crew…
