2009 Interview with Cristina Zenato by Lyndah Wells
By The Bahamas Weekly News Team
Freeport, Bahamas - Local resident and head of diving at UNEXSO, Cristina Zenato has recently been advised that she will be inducted in The Women's Divers Hall of Fame. The official induction of WDHOF Honorees is made annually at the Beneath the Sea (BTS) Expo, which is held in March at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ.
"I feel very honored and humbled to have been included in the highest recognition for wo men in diving. I have always looked at the women in the Hall of Fame as my inspiration and now I am side by side with them. This is an incredible opportunity to be able to expand my message to the next generations," Zenato told The Bahamas Weekly.
This past half year Cristina has become famous on the internet for her participation as a model and shark handler in a video produced by Joe Romeira called Nino Salerosa which has presently over 200,000 views on YouTube. Just today (January 20th) Zenato is being featured on the NBC Today Show for her participation in Mermaids in Motion along with Hollywood special effects artist Allan B Holt, with underwater footage by Grant W. Graves and Ric Frazier Production.
The Women Divers Hall of Fame™ (WDHOF) is an international
non-profit professional honor society whose member contributions span a wide variety of fields including: The Arts, Science, Medicine, Sports, Exploration, Marine Archeology, Media, Service, Dive Training and Education, Safety, Business, Marine Environment and Conservation, Free Diving, Commercial Diving, and Military Diving.
Cristina Zenato started diving in 1994, and has made the Bahamas home and diving her life. She lives her passion,which is Ocean conservation. Photo: Thaddius Bedford
Created in 1999 and incorporated in 2001 by six founding sponsors: Beneath the Sea, Inc., the Underwater Society of America, the Women’s Scuba Association, Women Underwater, Hillary Viders, Ph.D., and Capt. Kathy A. Weydig; WDHOF, Inc. was granted its 501(c)(3) status in 2002.
WDHOF's two-part mission is to:
1. Recognize women divers who have made outstanding contributions to the exploration, understanding, safety and enjoyment of our underwater world and
2. Support the underwater world and its associated careers by promoting opportunities for women and men in diving through scholarships, internships and mentorship opportunities and a worldwide network of industry contacts.
The following is written by Eddy Raphael who works with Zenato at UNEXSO:
Born in Italy, Cristina Zenato grew up in the rain forests of 1970’s African Congo until the age of 15, and naturally developed a love of the outdoors. Her tremendous passion for the ocean surfaced at a young age, and following her love for the water she journeyed to The Bahamas for work, and learned to dive..
16 years later she is still proudly working for The Underwater Explorers Society (UNEXSO), and from her humble beginnings as a Scuba Instructor, she climbed the ladder to become the head of diving at UNEXSO, teaching technical diving, plus cave and cavern classes.
When Cristina is not working, she can usually be found freediving or exploring new cave systems.
Speaking five different languages, Italian, English, German, French and Spanish, Cristina became a tour de force – a PADI, NAUI, SSI, SDI, open water instructor, NSS-CDS full cave instructor, Extended Range Instructor, TDI advanced Nitrox with decompression procedure and more, she is a talented young lady.
With sharks and caves part of her daily work Zenato uses them to address important issues of ocean management, water conservation and garbage disposal. Cristina also volunteers her time to explore and map cave systems providing vital information to extend their protection and conservation. She helps in the creation of marine parks with a recent emphasis on protecting the sharks in the Bahamas and the world. Cristina also helps educate local school children teaching them to dive through rescue diver believing there is great power in education. Photo: Arek Pers
Cristina’s love of exploration and caving is inspiring, yet it pales when it comes to Sharks. Some would say Cristina has a natural ‘gift’ with Sharks. Practicing a little known technique of rubbing and manipulating her fingers across the ampullae of Lorenzini, the visible dots [electro-receptive sensory organs] all around a shark’s head and face, she induces a tonic immobility. To the observer, this looks like a shark falling asleep right in her lap.
Last fall (2010) a Blue shark appeared to fall asleep in her hands, on the surface. As she caressed the beautiful ten foot ocean traveler. The fact that she had no chain-mail suit on for this occasion never seemed to cross her mind.
Her ability to work with several types of shark in this manner has allowed her to study up close, in the wild, with no stress from the usual hooks, gaffs, and undue pain some shark researchers have used to gather data. In fact, the sharks surrounding her home in The Bahamas almost seem to know her for her gentle spirit, and warm to her touch. Guests are on occasion, encouraged to feel the shark’s skin while in this calm state. This in turn gives visiting divers on the Shark Dive at UNEXSO the chance to dissolve any misconceptions or preconceptions they may have had about shark life. She teaches divers who are interested, to feed the local Caribbean Reef sharks by hand, hoping to bring people closer to understanding the secret world of these creatures.
First learning to feed sharks with her mentor [the legendary Ben Rose] Cristina has researched shark behavior, and comparison and change in sharks. From the Bimini Shark Lab, South Africa, North Carolina, Florida and Mexico, Cristina writes a few short stories and reports for newsletters about sharks, [and also cave diving and training] having observed the behaviors of Tigers, Great Whites, Lemons, Reefs, and Bulls. She has further developed her practice of tonic immobility, to remove hooks from shark’s mouths, to remove parasites, and for her Awareness Campaign against shark finning and capture, for shark protection, and human education.
Naturally, all this talent sparked up the attention of filmmakers, documentary and TV producers worldwide, and as you might imagine, the list of film and TV work Cristina has achieved is immense. Just a few on the TV list are BBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, ABC, Science and Nature programs all over Europe and the USA. Films which include her are Der See Wolf, Shark Water, Shark Man, Oceans, including non-profits like Gimme-A-Hug / Protect the Sharks Foundation.
Cristina has also been involved in magazines like Skin Diver, Sport Diver, Advance Diver Magazine and also working on calendars to fund shark awareness, and the list goes on. Needless to say, on her home island of Grand Bahama, Cristina works closely with the Bahamas National Trust, and has been awarded the rights/permit to dive the guarded Ben’s Cave, further forging a conservation alliance with them to re-draw the map of Ben’s, in aid to protect the delicate cave system.
Look for her in the next shark program you watch, she might well be lurking next to the lens negotiating with the shark to not worry about these odd people staring at them.. A sense of who Cristina Zenato is can only truly be felt underwater. There, she is more at home than she is on land, and an apt quote by Jacques Cousteau says it all:
“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.”
