Every shark feed dive thread is a guaranteed instant soap box!
It's a diverse issue with a range of places, operators, means, species involved, participant type and so forth. I'd like to try an Emerald Dive Charters trip someday. I'm curious as to what mix of species are likely (say, 60%+) to be seen over the course of, oh, say, 4 dives, and how much that varied with time of year?
Lemon sharks seem to be common participants, at least part of the year (all?), but how common are the tiger? Hammerheads? Does he feed bull sharks?
Just wondering if I ever book a trip back down to Jupiter and dive a few days there what I'm likely to see.
Richard.
The lemon shark aggregation is December into February; January would be a good pick to catch the height of it. While we do have a resident population that regularly hangs around the feeding sites, there are also "'out-of-towners" that show up. We have one in particular nicknamed "Garbage Guts" due to the fish stringer working its way out of his body cavity; we've seen him the last two years but only during the aggregation months. I would agree that generally speaking you do not need baits to get a good look at them during the aggregation.
The great hammerheads seem to show up in force in the spring; there will be sightings at other times of year but March-May is really the only period when the feeding sites can attract multiple individuals in one go. Before and after that they seem to scatter. April would be the best bet; this past April I did one dive on the
Esso Bonaire where we had at least three at once (all of which kept their distance due to the other sharks) and on the last dive we hit "Hammer Beach" where there were at least four with no other sharks competing with them; a couple came in for closeups. Interesting thing is that as far as I've seen, they're all males.
The tigers are also fairly reliable in spring; they seem to pack their bags and leave at the start of summer. The timing varies; in 2014 we had at least one sighting at the start of August, 2015 they all bugged out at the end of June as if the rent was due July 1, and this year a couple booked out by early May. They might drop back in here and there during the fall and winter, but like the hammers it's really springtime when you have a reasonable chance of having two, three, or even four of them all at once. The majority of these are females; this year we had one immature male join the party on a regular basis. Again, what's interesting is that aside from the new guy the rest of the regulars have all been there the past three years.
I'm not so familiar with the schedule on the bull sharks, but winter and spring seem to be the best bets. However in my experience the dive boats that do the feeds really don't go after them much anymore; I have a feeling that's because more often than not even with bait they're skittish around divers (the times they aren't skittish are interesting). These days it's really the snorkel boats that go after them, and I do think they're a lot bolder around freedivers.
The "summer variety pack" that moves into the Jupiter Deep Ledge between late May and August-September is primarily comprised of sandbar and silky sharks, and may include duskies, blacktips, and scalloped hammerheads.
Now, how much of this will you see without bait? Probably a bit; if someone in the party is shooting fish the odds go up. Lemons during the aggregation can be found in numbers, and drifting on the Deep Ledge at the proper times you'll probably run across bulls, sandbars, and silkies. Inside the 3-mile line there are a couple of reliable places to find Caribbean reef sharks. Tigers and hammers - it's not quite lighting-strike odds, but you either have to spend a lot of time out there or get really lucky. Spotting them when they do turn up can be hard; last year I apparently dropped right in on a hammerhead off Pompano that vanished before I could turn around. On one particular dive on the Riverwalk wrecks off Palm Beach three years ago I managed to miss a tiger, several bulls, and a couple lemon sharks (note: the spearos had dropped in first and when I got to the
Shasha Boekanier it was half-engulfed in cobia blood, which explained all the fins).
The next question is, how close of an encounter would you like? Are you content with seeing a shark maybe 30-40 feet away for a few minutes, before it moves off? Or do you want it close enough for a full-frame, well-lit photo multiple times over a period of maybe half an hour or more? Those "photographers" make a living by selling images, and it's the closeups that sell. What keeps me coming back is seeing the familiar faces; the individuals I recognize after three consecutive years that have their own distinguishing features and behavioral quirks. I wouldn't have picked that up from random encounters.
I realize it's a divisive topic, especially since DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE is drilled into our heads for good reason (although I don't see people lined up to protest the tarpon feeding down at Robbie's in Islamorada). I have talked to a couple of shark researchers about it, and their view seems to be that while there can be behavioral impacts, they aren't detrimental ones (i.e., the sharks aren't going to lose their hunting skills or start rolling random divers for handouts). Does participating in one of these trips carry a risk? Anytime you have a feeding situation and teeth flashing around, that potential is there. Personally, I figure that falls under "enter at your own risk;" to be honest the riskiest part of my last few trips has been the drive home (see the A&I "Near Misses and Lessons Learned" section for my experience falling asleep at the wheel while on I-95).
On a side note, what will be interesting is to see how the expanded field of players shakes out. Some of them may not be able to stay afloat (pun intended); alternately we could see what's happened elsewhere in the world - baited shark dives becoming big enough that the regulatory authorities take notice in some fashion (permits, licenses, rules etc.).