Shark attack, Egypt, Brothers islands

[BlueTrin]

Where can one buy these foldable spears ?

 

[rongoodman]

One of my favorite instructors used to say that you don'

Does Aggressor take similar precautions?

Yes. The spear looks a little different.

(I'm referring here only to the Okeanos II at Cocos Island.)

 

[Rollin Bonz]

Where can one buy these foldable spears ?

Googled folding spear...

foldspear.com

 

[Dan]

Does Aggressor take similar precautions?

I don’t know.

Another thing that we were instructed to do is to not diving alone or spread out widely like those guys in the video. When a Tiger shark appears & swimming around around us, we are supposed to cluster together, covering each other back, don’t swim away, always watch its movement and aware where it is at all time.

When we are ready to GTFO of the water, we need to wait until the skiff right above us & leave the group one diver at a time. The DM would point who goes up first & when. The diver, when his turn to get on the skiff, should swim up to the ladder & get on the boat right away. The DM would get on the boat last.

 

[Dan]

Googled folding spear...

foldspear.com

That looks pretty flimsy to me. It’s more like for poking a Lionfish.

You need to imagine about 400-lb, 10’ long fish charging towards you. That’s why they put a tennis ball on the back of the handle, just in case the rod jabbing back on your chest, when you stab the pointy end to the fish. The tennis ball help soften the impact of the jab on your chest.

 

[divinh]

When we are ready to GTFO of the water, we need to wait until the skiff right above us & leave the group one diver at a time. The DM would point who goes up first & when. The diver, when his turn to get on the skiff, should swim up to the ladder & get on the boat right away. The DM would get on the boat last.

This organized skiff boarding would not have worked with group I was with in Komodo. People would just make their way over to the skiff upon surfacing and not care that other people had surfaced first, then after boarding, would gingerly sit there and remove gloves and boots instead of moving away from the ladder and helping with fins/cameras.

 

[Dan]

What are going to do, take it on any dive where you might encounter a shark, whip it out whenever a shark is around? Boy, would that make it difficult on any of the Deep Ledge dives off Jupiter with the Bulls around, or the Lemon Shark dives at Lemon Drop during season. To say nothing about the baited/fed dives done by Emerald. Have you been to Cocos or Galapagos, sharks everywhere, including Tigers at Cocos. Of course, that's a whole other topic.

Yep, there were plenty of sharks in Cocos & Jupiter


Most of them didn’t bother me, in fact I had to hide under a rock & hold my breath to get those shy hammerheads to come close.

I haven’t seen Oceanic whitetip or Tiger shark though. I hope I don’t freak out when I encounter one of those beasts.

 

[Dan]

This organized skiff boarding would not have worked with group I was with in Komodo. People would just make their way over to the skiff upon surfacing and not care that other people had surfaced first, then after boarding, would gingerly sit there and remove gloves and boots instead of moving away from the ladder and helping with fins/cameras.

Wait until something like this:
Catastrophe at Cocos Island, Costa Rica: Undercurrent 01/2018

Then, they’ll change their attitudes.

 

[tarponchik]

Argo’s DMs use a meter long rod with pointy end to fend off Cocos’ Tiger Shark. You can see in the picture, below. He carries it on his back the bayonet handle rod with tennis ball top (as thrust absorber when the rod bounces back to him from the shark forward momentum), inside a white PVC pipe.

View attachment 488793

Looks like a reasonable idea.

10 days ago I was taking video of some small stuff at the base of the coral wall at about 50 ft. When I was done and turned my head back forward, I saw a huge Tiger coming from the sands to our left, turning 90 degrees maybe 20 ft ahead of me and going away same way we were heading. Neither myself nor my buddy/wife saw her coming. Another one circled me several times in the harbor. This Tiger is well known to local divers and is referred to as "friendly". Well, maybe she is friendly now (though I won't call the way she ogled me quite "friendly"). But one day she'll run out of turtles, then what?

 

[KevinNM]

This organized skiff boarding would not have worked with group I was with in Komodo. People would just make their way over to the skiff upon surfacing and not care that other people had surfaced first, then after boarding, would gingerly sit there and remove gloves and boots instead of moving away from the ladder and helping with fins/cameras.

The answer is that if they don’t follow the safety rules they are unsafe divers and unsafe divers don’t dive. So, what’s it going to be?