Cool little TV show about Tiger Beach

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Thanks. Tiger Beach via live-aboard is one of my hoped for 'Bucket List' destinations in years to come, Lord willing and providing. Hope to dive out of Morehead, North Carolina late summer to get some experience diving around sizable sharks (sand tiger sharks), working my way gradually to a good comfort level. Sharks don't especially freak me out, but the prospect of being surrounded by large tiger sharks still sounds a bit unnerving.

That video helped me get some sense of what a trip would be like.

Richard.
 
Capt. Scotty:

Enjoyed the video. Something someone said in the show in the 1st post came to mind while I was watching the interaction with the tiger shark in your video. To paraphrase, I think someone said something to the effect that tiger sharks aren't as scary looking as some species. The face, that is.

It's an interesting point. I watching videos & read about tiger beach diving cageless and can envision myself doing that.

But I hear about people diving cageless with great whites and my natural gut reaction is 'You idiot!!!' Great whites can get a bit larger, and from what I've read are credited with causing more human deaths, but I don't think the difference in either case is great.

I wonder if there's some logical reason for the difference besides my impression that great whites are a lot scarier looking than tiger sharks?

You guys that dive cageless with tigers; would you do it with great whites?

Richard.
 
One way to look at it.... When we dive with Tiger Sharks we are on the bottom in 20 to 30 feet of water. When you dive with Great Whites you are in open water. Sharks normally attack from the bottom up....
 
Capt. Scotty:

Enjoyed the video. Something someone said in the show in the 1st post came to mind while I was watching the interaction with the tiger shark in your video. To paraphrase, I think someone said something to the effect that tiger sharks aren't as scary looking as some species. The face, that is.

It's an interesting point. I watching videos & read about tiger beach diving cageless and can envision myself doing that.

But I hear about people diving cageless with great whites and my natural gut reaction is 'You idiot!!!' Great whites can get a bit larger, and from what I've read are credited with causing more human deaths, but I don't think the difference in either case is great.

I wonder if there's some logical reason for the difference besides my impression that great whites are a lot scarier looking than tiger sharks?

You guys that dive cageless with tigers; would you do it with great whites?

Richard.

I've never seen a live great white shark in person and I've only dealt with sub-adult (<10 ft) tigers, but the impression I get is that when it comes to attack behavior tigers are more like close-range ambushers whereas white sharks like to attack from long range. The biggest concern we have with the tigers is them getting into a blind spot; keeping your personal space under surveillance and making sure you can block any cheeky moves will probably work. I imagine in open water with a great white there's a real concern that they might get below you in 100+ ft of water and come rocketing up without warning.

Physiologically speaking the two species are built very differently and that influences their behavior. Tigers are built for quick acceleration and not sustained speed; they'll try to work their way within a few tail-strokes of what they're after before launching an attack. Great whites on the other hand have a higher metabolism and are built for sustained speed; one researcher supposedly did some back-of-the-envelope calculations on how fast one would have to go to breach out of the water and figured they had to be doing 25-30 mph. They'll often dive deep before striking; off seal colonies they've been observed down to 300 ft. You have a much better chance of picking up a tiger preparing to attack than you do a great white under certain conditions.

That said, it seems that if you do encounter a great white cruising on the level with you and checking you out, you're probably not in too much danger as it's given up its favored advantage. Just bear in mind that it's a much more energetic animal.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom