Snopes claims the photo is not real and challenges the claims of the story, but legitimate sources say dogs were, in fact, used as shark bait.
Source below by Jo Singer "Reunion Island is a French controlled territory off the coast of Southern Africa, located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar."
[This is part of Jo's writing:]
Reha Hutin, president of the Thirty Million Friends Foundation, an animal rights group, said in a 2005 article in the
National Geographic that Reunion has a huge population of stray dogs, which reaches over 150,000. Ms. Hutin sent a film crew to Reunion to verify the facts that live animals were being used as bait to hunt sharks and if true to expose the practice on the animal rights' group weekly television show.
This film crew found three separate cases of dogs with multiple hooks embedded in their snouts and paws. Ms. Hutin went on the say, "From then on everyone started to take the whole story seriously and realized it was true."
Upon release of the story, the Brigette Bardot Foundation, a Paris-based
animal welfare group's spokesperson, Stephanie Roche confirmed that live animals were being used as bait on Reunion. But shortly thereafter it became illegal for live or dead dogs or cats to be carried in fishing boats. A written statement was issued by the French Embassy in Washington D.C. condemning the use of dogs as shark bait, stressing that these acts are illegal and are not tolerated in the French territory. The Embassy stated that these are "very isolated cases and authorities on the island are closely monitoring the situation."
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