Nobody posted about the nurse shark attack yet?

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A few stray thoughts:
I'm glad that the woman will be okay.

It's hard to tell from the video if the woman did anything to encourage or provoke the shark.

Based on the reputation of nurse sharks, and the relative lack of horrific damage to the woman's arm, I'd say it looks like one of the "exploratory bites" that we hear about.

I remember being told the nurse sharks don't have your "typical shark teeth", but instead have bony plates. Is that correct?

While I suppose this is no surprise, I'm really annoyed by the number of websites/news sites that presented this video, along with an accompanying story, as "shark savagely attacks woman while swimming". As annoying as that is, the promo for the story had pictures of a great white, and I think a tiger shark.
Also, one article said that the woman was "scuba diving", later in the same article said she was "snorkeling", then finally "swimming". As if we need any further evidence, this is a reminder to not believe everything (anything?) we read.
 
That whole video was kind of odd, never seen a nurse act like that even under fish cleaning docks.

One more place for the list of attractions that I will not plan on visiting...[/QUOTE]
Might well have happened at his place, or one similar: Swimming With Nurse Sharks At Compass Cay, Exumas, Bahamas | Jessie on a Journey and also described at Nurse Sharks of Compass Cay

Gotta like these directions: "When swimming with Nurse Sharks, pet their backs but stay away from their mouths and try to keep your hands above your head if chum is being thrown into the water and they’re eating" and the comment that "the marina workers feed the fish. This makes them very friendly animals; they’re not likely to expend the extra effort to gnaw off a leg when they know that they’re going to get something much better hand-fed to them."

One more place for the list of attractions that I will not plan on visiting...

We've been to Compass Cay many times, it's a beautiful place and contrary to popular belief swimming with the shawks isn't mandatory.
bahama_30(pp_w940_h2501).jpg


Also, in my experience the swimming pigs over on Big Major bite much harder.
bahama_21(pp_w940_h704).jpg
 
Nurse sharks do have unusual dentition... thousands of very short teeth vs the much larger teeth of many other shark species. They are also largely suction feeders.
 
Nurse sharks do have unusual dentition... thousands of very short teeth vs the much larger teeth of many other shark species. They are also largely suction feeders.

So she wasn't "bitten" by the nurse shark; she was "scraped." Which is what the picture of her arm really shows.

Unfortunately for the "sharks are scary monsters" media, getting "scraped" by a nurse shark just isn't sufficiently dramatic.
 
So she wasn't "bitten" by the nurse shark; she was "scraped." Which is what the picture of her arm really shows.

Unfortunately for the "sharks are scary monsters" media, getting "scraped" by a nurse shark just isn't sufficiently dramatic.

I agree that this story has been accentuated by the "sharks are scary monsters" media, but she was absolutely bitten by the nurse shark. You can clearly see the punctures from the teeth on her arm. Nurse Sharks have small teeth (pretty common among sharks with similar feeding styles) and independent dentition which is the simplest type of tooth arrangement found in sharks.

The best hypothesis I have seen for that behavior is that the animal was habituated to hand feeding, but there really is not enough to go on in that video to say anything definitively. I work with sharks professionally and have a couple of scars from scrapes. We display around a dozen species at our aquarium (including nurse sharks). I cannot overstate how strongly I am opposed to attractions that hand feed wild sharks.

Jackie
 
I can't blame the shark, if I were single I would have probably bit on her as well....I mean assuming that I had been invited to of course.
 
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