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Rum promoter’s shark hunt controversy
Popular rum promoter, Newton Rodriguez, has angered environmentalists with his plan to host a shark-hunting tournament in the Dominican Republic.
Rodriguez, who organised a similar shark hunt after the release of the movie Jaws, is a promoter for Dominican rum company Barcelo.
The plan is for the tournament to take place in waters south of Santo Domingo, but conservationists are calling on the Dominican president, Danilo Medina, to stop the tournament.
Rafael Garcia who runs a scuba diving and travel website in Spain, has launched a petition requesting Medina to ban the shark hunt.
Garcia told the Press Association that he learned about the tournament after reading several international forums. He said: It causes us great sadness that people hunt sharks for fun and see them as an obstacle to tourism.”
According to the Press Association between 26 million and 73 million sharks are caught annually. Tournament organisers have said that the sharks hunted should not weigh less than 45 kilograms.