Jorge,
Thanks for reaching out and offering more detail on your side of the story. I'm impressed by the information you provided and the efforts you're taking down there to coordinate conservation education with other shops in Playa, the government and locals / divers. Also very impressed by your tone and demeanor throughout, you could easily have come out swinging but rather you chose to invite me to learn more before making any decisions about your intent.
From our conversations it's clear you're interested in more than a fast buck by exploiting these local resources and rather are spending a great deal of time educating about sharks, their role as the oceans top predator and importance in maintaining a healthy reef system.
It's easy for your competitors to take shots at your practices, however, with some of them, if you look closely - they'll be chastising you on the boards but also running premium priced dives to the same site (albeit without feeding) thereby having the best of both worlds for themselves. That's a bigger offense IMO and more of a reason not to use a shop than if they were straight with potential customers and present their side of the story as you have.
The jury is still out (and may always be) on whether educating people about the beauty, grace and power of the sharks through baited dives is worth the risk of incident given that any incident would result in far more people getting a message perpetuating the "shark week" type mentality and/or worst case the slaughter of 70 sharks like we saw after the Cancun "attacks". While we may be on separate sides of that argument I look forward to stopping in and talking more to you next time I'm in Playa, seeing more about your operation and perhaps getting underwater with you!
