Half a century ago, the Canary Islands created an artificial beach to attract tourism. He unknowingly set up a sanctuary for angel sharks

When the Canarian authorities embarked on the complicated task of creating an artificial beach in the town of Saint Andrew, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, what they had in mind was a paradisiacal picture, one attractive enough to attract legions of tourists eager to plant their umbrellas and towels on golden sand. That happened between the 50s and 70s. Today the Las Teresitas beach it is indeed a bucolic place for vacationers, but it is also known for having become almost a “sanctuary” for other creatures that in all probability did not enter the equation half a century ago: sharks.

And not just any.

“Welcome to Las Teresitas”. To know The origin of Las Teresitas beach, at least as we know it today, we must go back to the Spain of the third quarter of the 20th century, that of the Francoist developmentalism, when he considered converting what until then had been a stony beach, made of rocks, stones and a small strip of black sand, into a paradisiacal environment equipped with its own breakwater and sand worthy of the Caribbean. The objective: to attract visitors, of course.

With the purpose of turning the area into a great urban and tourist pole, in the purest Benidorm style, it was proposed to build a hotel on top of the military battery, 15,000 tourist places, buildings on the beachfront and urbanizations. The most interesting thing, however, was its “heart”, its star piece: a wide artificial beach where both tourists and the residents of Santa Cruz could take a dip, who until then had been forced to go to stony beaches, punished by the onslaught from the sea and affected by the high tide.

A Saharan beach in the Canary Islands. The Ministry’s OK came in 1967 and three years later the Council of Ministers approved the reform of the Urban Planning Plan for the area. As recounts Notice Journal, the works started by the breakwater, a wide breakwater one kilometer long built 150 meters from the shore. At his shelter, Las Teresitas was protected from the waves and became a huge saltwater raft. Ideal for relaxing dips.

However, one important detail remained: the sand. Instead of the black grain, a lighter one was chosen, brought from the Western Sahara desert, then Spanish provincein four million bags transported by ship. With them an extensive area of ​​the beach was covered, about 1.3 kilometers long by 100 meters wide. By 1972, Santa Cruz already had its new, expanded beach, with golden sand and calm waters… and, incidentally, a few urban legends, such as those that claimed that scorpions and exotic animals traveled in the sacks.

Success among tourists… and something else. It wasn’t a bad bet. At least from a tourist point of view. Today perhaps we would see with different eyes what to modify a beach to the wild, building a huge breakwater and deploying 240,000 tons of Saharan sand, but half a century later Las Teresitas appears in the rankings of the best beaches of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In addition to an ideal environment for visitors selfies they are there kiosks and hammocks.

Not all are bathers in Las Teresitas. In addition to the locals and tourists, there are other creatures that have shown a peculiar predilection for the area: the squatina squatinabetter known as angel sharks and which are characterized by a wide and flattened body that is usually around 150 centimeters long when they reach adulthood. As a nocturnal species, they usually swim along the bottom at night, feeding on fish, rays, crustaceans and mollusks, and spend the day buried in the bottom of the beach, hidden in the sand.

And why are they there? In 2016, a group of researchers found that Las Teresitas is a breeding area for the cherub and slipped some interesting ideas. Although there is evidence that it was a frequent species as early as the 19th century, it was frequently caught in longlines in the 1970s and has been found in other parts of the Canary Islands, such as El Hierro, La Palma, Gran Canaria or Lanzarote, the Scientists point to several characteristics of the San Andrés beach that could make it a particularly attractive place.

“The results of this study confirm that the beach is being used as a breeding area by angelsharks in the area,” researchers highlight, who have verified that the frequency with which specimens are observed is greater and the juveniles are also located more easily than in other points. Not only that: the calves also tend to stay or return to Las Teresitas. Regarding how long they have been there, they acknowledge that there is evidence of angelsharks since at least 1996.

A haven of peace for angel sharks. Holidaymakers seem not to be the only ones who find a haven of peace there. “Las Teresitas meets the conditions described for most coastal shark breeding areas: calm areas with waters protected from currents and waves, with high food production for hatchlings and juveniles and low presence of predators,” the experts explainwhich indicate the changes in the beach: “Its physiognomy, with a wide breakwater and small open mouths at the ends, means that the internal waters remain calm throughout the year, even during storms.”

Since Las Teresitas is a bathing area, professional and recreational fishing are also prohibited inside the beach. It is only allowed on the outer face of the breakwaters, already towards open water. “This protection may be the reason for the high density of juveniles and adults of species of fishing interest inside,” they reflect. Thanks to this advantage, baby angelsharks have a generous supply of prey such as geldesbream or cuttlefish.

an endangered species. The fact that we can see them relatively frequently in Las Teresitas —as long as we have a well-trained eye to identify them in the depths, of course— does not mean that angelsharks run wild. On the contrary. Although its historical distribution area covers a strip that goes from Norway and Sweden to the coasts of Morocco, the Sahara and the Canary Islands, including the Mediterranean or Black Sea, during the last half century it has been affected by the Trawling. In the Spanish archipelago it benefits of the absence of this type of fishing due to the depth and topography of its seabed.

In Irish waters it is considered on the verge of extinction and it is believed that in recent years its global population has suffered “a drastic decline”as described in October by David Jiménez, PhD in Marine Sciences from the ULPGC. in 2019 even the Canarian population of angelsharks was included in the Spanish Catalog of Threatened Species, a decision in tune with the International Union of Nature (IUCN), which considers these sharks endangered.

The “frictions” of coexistence. Combining facets is not always easy. And Las Teresillas is no exception. Its dual status as a tourist center and a “sanctuary” for angel sharks sometimes leads to friction, especially when bathers step on the pups buried in the sand during the day. The result: some occasional biteswhich are usually not serious, and specimens with malformations precisely because of the blows they receive.

And although this type of encounter is usually the most mediatic, there are other more serious problems that are easy to solve. one is the Garbage accumulation in the background of the beach. Another sport fishing that, bypassing the regulations that protects them since 2010, continues to prey on these types of creatures, as denounced at least by the Alliance for Sharks of the Canary Islands. in 2014.

Images: Dronepicr (Flickr), Ania Mendrek (Flickr) and Philippe Guillaume (Cabocanarias.com – Flickr)

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