We recently connected with Cristina Zenato and have shared our conversation below.

Cristina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

“There are no monsters in the sea, only the ones we make up in our heads” These are and will always be the best teaching words I can connect to my dad and to his taking me to the ocean since before I could walk. I grew up in an ocean family that went to the ocean and brought me there. My dream was to become an underwater scuba ranger, who would roam the oceans and the reefs to protect them from careless divers and to have sharks for friends. I now work with sharks in the wild and introduce people to their unique world. My mission is to create an understanding and appreciation, together with the desire to protect these perhaps misunderstood creatures on the planet, by people above and below the water. While working with sharks I realized they are extremely vulnerable to our presence and that our actions above the water is affecting our oceans, the sharks and our likelihood to actually survive as a species.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I grew up in the African rain forest where I developed a passion for the outdoors and wilderness. Through my family, I acquired an equal passion for the oceans and have always been drawn to the water from a very young age.

Nearly thirty years ago I journeyed to the Bahamas to learn how to scuba dive and immediately made The Bahamas my home and diving my life.

I am a PADI Course Director, (instructor of instructors) NSS-CDS Advanced Cave diving instructor, TDI Technical Instructor, shark behaviorist and marine ecologist.

I speak five languages, Italian, English, German, French and Spanish. Some say I speak a sixth one “Shark”.

Work with Sharks

I work in the wild with sharks. I meet and cooperate with different scientists, behaviorists and handlers in the Bahamas, South Africa, Fiji, Rhode Island, California, Florida, North Carolina, China, and Mexico.

While I have worked with over a dozen different species in different locations, my primary work is with Caribbean Reef sharks in my home in The Bahamas.

I am one of the first in the world to have been able to induce a state of relaxation in the Caribbean Reef sharks through gentle touch. To the observer, this looks like the shark is falling asleep in my lap; they, however, remain alert and aware of their surroundings.

Sharks know me and we communicate through touch as well as energy and connection.
“Witnessing this interaction, directly while diving with Cristina or remotely by watching her numerous contributions to television documentaries and reading about her work in magazines, has created a change in perception from the general public. It has helped dissolve misconceptions and preconceptions about sharks. Cristina and her sharks have become ambassadors for many other species and animals in the world.”

Through my work, I help sharks by removing hooks from their mouths and parasites. I collect data, and support scientists’ research. I teach close interactions with sharks as well as educational programs on shark conservation.
I developed a Caribbean Reef Shark Diver Distinctive Specialty.

I was the initiator of the movement that resulted in the full protection of sharks in the entire Bahamas.

Working in Caves

I am an active cave diving instructor and a passionate explorer. I have conducted and completed the survey of dozens of cave systems in the Bahamas, have completed the exploration and connection between a land-based cave and an ocean blue hole, a goal many deemed impossible. I am constantly working on the exploration and record of caves, to determine their location, connection to the surrounding eco-systems and promoting their conservation. In 2020, together with my busband, I completed the discovery, exploration and survey of two new cave systems, never discovered before for a total of over 15 miles of passageways.

My fieldwork with sharks and caves allows me to bring to the surface a unique perspective on life with a conservation approach to our relationship with this planet and other people. I closely work with individuals training them in the art of diving but at the same time conduct countless educational programs to highlight the need for better understanding of the oceans and water planet as a whole. My work extends into inspiring and mentoring younger generations in taking the road less traveled, following a passion to the maximum and not abiding to the rules and restrictions society imposes us from a professional and economical point of view.

I am still a very active and passionate diver and educator while dividing my attention between expeditions, managing a full operation, working on cave exploration and mapping, and working with sharks.

I am very prolific speaker and writer, I am an inducted member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, The Explorers Club, The Ocean Artists Society and a recipient of the Platinum Pro 5000.

In 2019 I decided to create People of the Water, a 501c3 non-profit organization designed to widen the conduction and distribution of training, education, research and studies relating to water, oceans and environmental issues affecting both the people and the animals of said environments.

I still actively supports other non-profit organizations such as The Bahamas National Trust, the Women Divers Hall of Fame scholarships and training programs, the American Shark Conservancy, I am a mentor for the Our World Underwater Scholarship Society and the Explorers Club, and I dedicate a lot of my time to the education of local students in the Bahamas. During a year I host at least six individuals, covering from their staying to their diving and training for a minimum of two weeks. In the last thirty years I have trained free of charge over hundred Bahamians from Open Water all the way to the professional levels of Divermaster and Instructor.

I believe that each one of us can make a difference and that “One small action is better than no big action”

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

On September 1st, 2019, a major hurricane carved its way through the island of Grand Bahama With maximum sustained winds of 185 mph (295 km/h), tying it with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane for the highest wind speeds of an Atlantic hurricane ever recorded at landfall, Dorian sat on our island for over 48 hours, finally pulling away on September 3rd. What ensued was absolute chaos, and my husband and I were right in the middle of it. While the island drowned under the flood waters of the ocean, we found ourselves drowning in challenges. Less than six months later the world plunged into covid and our lives would never be the same.
Following that 3rd of September, everything seemed to crumble around me. Suddenly the hardships of living on an island I had been willing to pay for so long in exchange for my lifestyle, like missing family, forgoing all the valuable celebrations together, simple tasks as finding items for a day-to-day living, hit me all at once and it felt I could no longer carry their weight.
Instead of giving in and leaving I held on to my core values, my dreams and my goals: Exploration Education and Conservation.
At first I needed to find a way to make a living, not an easy task on a small island with hundreds in the same situation; resilience is something I have built over the years. While people think that living on an island in The Bahamas might be a paradise situation, it is not an easy way of living. Each day is a challenge. I always tell people that in the islands two is one, and one is none, meaning that anything I need to live and function has to always be planned ahead. For example if I only have one charging cord for the laptop and it breaks, I am left with none, there is no close by store I can go to and purchase a new one. Planning is a fundemental part of my resilience. I was ready for Dorian, as I have been ready for each of the storms and issues that came through the years. Being prepared allowed me to soften the blow of a sudden loss of job and income. Life teaches us that it happens while we are busy planning it. So I plan for what I can control, not what I cannot control. I cannot control where the storms will go or what the market will do, but I can control and plan how I prepare for them, how I live the day to day with the understanding that it’s not a constant and not a given. Through the years resilience has allowed me to build a flexible attitude that supports an effective survival mode. I live a good life, but I always consider how to reduce costs; this skill proved vital in the last two years. I paired it with finding ways to create a small income. I always tell people that no jobs are beneath us and the ones we found had nothing to do with diving or anything I had done for the last thirty years, but I learned as I went along, sometimes spending time on the internet reading on the tasks asked to complete and then working on them the next day. Resilience is built day by day, small steps by small steps. It was easy to come here and start this adventure thirty years ago, if we don’t challenge ourselves and take risks at 20 years old, when are we going to do it? But the resilience part is the decision to stay, year after year, to push forward through societal opinions and judgments, to follow the heart and passion rather than worry about the box we have been told we need to fit in.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I believe there are two acts that helped me build the reputation. One has been what I call dive site fidelity, being in the same place over ther years, repeating the actions and establishing my presence, no matter the hardships that came my way. I have created a place where people are sure to find me and they rely on year after year. The other one has been the fact that although I have a strict adherence to the rules and regulations of the industry, never taking short cuts for the sake of a better income or a faster outcome, sticking to what are my beliefs and morals, standing my ground against the requests to bend the rules and at times saying no, I also spend a lot of time listening to my customers, I create their custom experiences and I build something for them, instead of asking them to adapt to the rigid structure of a product. It’s a balance between the rules and the individuals.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cristinazenato.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristinazenato/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/czunderwater/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinazenato/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/CristinaZenato
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OxtcCvv9wNe-VbasQqj-A
• Other: www.pownonprofit.org

Image Credits
Credits Kewin Lorenzen and Cristina Zenato, with the exception of the one freediving with sharks in the pink shirt and shorts that goes to Lucie Drlikova