Snorkeler Killed by Sharks in the Bahamas

[drrich2]

Okay, let's look at what I saw at the shark feeding dives with tigers, lemons and at times bulls out of Florida, and consider the issue that fed sharks might associate humans with food and accost random humans they encounter elsewhere.

What I saw was an ice chest with chopped fish would have the drain plug pulled, so a scent trail run out for awhile till the boat stopped. That brought a tiger shark in. It wasn't just waiting for a conditioned shark to wander by and see us.

When a tiger shark showed, it might cruise around, and in pretty short order go to the shark feeder. If the shark were coming in to check out random humans at close range to see if they had food, the paying customer spectators would be in more danger. Yes, sharks may approach the rest of us, too, but they seem to have a pretty good idea who's got the food.

So let's say a tiger shark who's attended some shark feedings cruises elsewhere and detects divers or snorkelers in the distance, and associates the sound of regulator discharge, boat motors or what-have-you with getting fed enough to go check it out.

Moray eels accustomed to getting lion fish sometimes accost dives in frighteningly direct, close quarters. Will a large tiger shark come get in somebody's face, or grab them, because it thinks they might have a fish?

Seems if that were likely we'd hear of a lot more cases of attacks. What seems more plausible is that these sharks, having a range of senses, can detect at some distance whether any of the humans have a crate with big hunks of dead fish, and if so which has it. If none of the above, the shark will likely move off.

A shark that doesn't move off is one we can't confirm shark feeding was a factor in, as that shark at some point was after something other than what shark feeders provide.

Tiger sharks aren't moray eels, alligators or bears. The practical realities of dealing with them may experientially be different than we might've anticipated.

 

[johndiver999]

With respect to the question about tiger sharks.

One of the longest running and most prolific shark feeders, unfortunately got most of the meat removed from his forearm from a tiger during a feeding over a year ago. They are dangerous and are not entirely predictable - even for the experts who have done it hundreds of times.

 

[Stoo]

I don't know the circumstances of this tragedy well enough to comment on it, but recently I made the personal decision to no longer participate in shark feeding dives...

^^^ This. I made the same decision decades ago. I love sharks and I love photographing them, but at their core, they're really big fish, kinda dumb as animals go, and they have really big teeth.

Oh ya... we are immersed in their world where we are utter klutzes and they are just perfect. To constantly hand-feed apex predators like Tiger Sharks, always in the same location has to alter their behaviour and in ways that must make them less leery of humans and teach them to associate the presence of humans with a free lunch. This just seems like common sense. I challenge you to name an animal that can't be conditioned to human interaction by offering food. It ain't rocket science. For eons humans have done this with everything from falcons to elephants and circus tigers to the family dog.

Regardless, this is a horrible event and I can't imagine the grief this young woman's family is facing.

 

[itsmeok]

This just seems like common sense. I challenge you to name an animal that can't be conditioned to human interaction by offering food. It ain't rocket science. For eons humans have done this with everything from falcons to elephants and circus tigers to the family dog.

Depends what you mean by conditioned. There are a number of studies referenced in these posts which indicate that the statement that tiger sharks are conditioned by shark feeding is incorrect. These sharks won't turn up to be fed each day. They will go off and do whatever they do for long periods of time. My dog on the other hand expects to be fed each night.

 

[itsmeok]

Agree!

Most spearfisherman have a significant aversion to allowing a shark to take their catch, not just because they lose their catch, but there is a very strong sentiment in that group of divers who feel that sharks are intelligent and can learn and therefore allowing a shark to take your fish is just making the shark much more dangerous for the next diver that the shark encounters.

I think some time in the future we will look back at all the hand feeding shark circuses as similar to this:

Old Yellowstone: Bear Feeding

Shouldn't the discussion then include spearfishing? There are many similarities - e.g. same profile at the surface. Spearfishing also adds the vibrations of wounded fish and has been well studied as being a primary risk factor in shark attacks....

Why are we not asking for spearfishing to be banned?

Fatal shark attacks on divers in Australia, 1960-2017. - PubMed - NCBI

"Spearfishing and other seafood collection, as well as diving near fishing activities and/or seals, were identified as major risk factors."

And here is the recommendation if a shark shows too much interest while you are spearfishing..

" It is likely that the shark has been attracted to the sound and smells associated with your activity and it is aroused and interested in consuming your catch. Let it have it – no catch is worth the risk of personal injury."

Advice to Divers

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I wasn’t really trying to make a definitive statement, but we tend to look at animal behavior in very black and white terms. A shark (or a polar bear or moose for that matter) will feed opportunistically while otherwise maintaining migrations or other behaviors. a bear that raids a poorly managed campsite might not go seeking more campsites, but he is certainly going to take advantage of the next one comes across. A shark previously fed by humans may well look for a meal when it encounters a the next human. If that person is a spear fisherman or a snorkeler, there is virtually no way to tell, especially if the encounters are days and hundreds of miles apart. There are a lot of blanks in our understanding of shark migrations and behavior. Even when provided with ample scientific evidence, people are often unwilling to change behavior because it would go against their perceived interests.

One thing to note with terrestrial animal comparisons is the vast difference in scale when you're talking about movement patterns. A male grizzly may have a territory of up to 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles for those of us who can't be bothered to use metric), which sounds extensive but is a literal drop in the ocean compared to something that may range from the Bahamas to Bermuda and generally chart a course looking something like Billy from Family Circus in between. A few years ago I sat in on a lecture by Dr. Jeremy Vaudo at Nova Southeastern University, who stated he has a love/hate relationship with tiger sharks because there's no discernable movement pattern that's common between factors like gender or size; the sharks just kind of all go in random directions over possibly a quarter of the North Atlantic. That extends to their offspring as well; I've talked to researchers who have pulled up newborn tiger sharks both on grass flats and over 1,000 ft of blue water. So you're comparing a terrestrial animal that in many cases is very unlikely to be able to go about it's normal business without possibly bumping into humans (possibly even human settlements) to an aquatic animal that may rarely encounter humans and only in certain parts of its range.

With respect to the question about tiger sharks.

One of the longest running and most prolific shark feeders, unfortunately got most of the meat removed from his forearm from a tiger during a feeding over a year ago. They are dangerous and are not entirely predictable - even for the experts who have done it hundreds of times.

I've heard enough accounts of that particular incident to say it pretty much amounted to something out of that ridiculous "hand safety awareness" training my company made me take recently. The operator in question was distracted and had his hand on the bait crate; unfortunately at that point a 10-ft tiger came up behind him and started gnawing on the crate. The description I heard of what happened afterwards was "she knew she made a boo-boo and ran to hide," which while I wince at the anthropomorphism does explain why he's still alive. Getting one's hand almost severed at 60+ ft is bad enough without a 400-lb shark trying to finish the job. For the record, while Randy is spending more time ashore working on his golf game he did get back to diving two months later and has gotten back to running feeding dives - even with the same shark, which was absent most of the following year but came back in late 2018.

So yes, it's dangerous to be a shark feeder and anyone who has illusions they can do it and not get hurt is kidding themselves. Just about every one I know has been bit to varying degrees ranging from scratches to Randy's injury; if you're putting your hands around sharp objects on a regular basis it will happen eventually. That does not equate to random divers getting mugged for food even if they don't have anything.

Okay, let's look at what I saw at the shark feeding dives with tigers, lemons and at times bulls out of Florida, and consider the issue that fed sharks might associate humans with food and accost random humans they encounter elsewhere.

What I saw was an ice chest with chopped fish would have the drain plug pulled, so a scent trail run out for awhile till the boat stopped. That brought a tiger shark in. It wasn't just waiting for a conditioned shark to wander by and see us.

When a tiger shark showed, it might cruise around, and in pretty short order go to the shark feeder. If the shark were coming in to check out random humans at close range to see if they had food, the paying customer spectators would be in more danger. Yes, sharks may approach the rest of us, too, but they seem to have a pretty good idea who's got the food.

So let's say a tiger shark who's attended some shark feedings cruises elsewhere and detects divers or snorkelers in the distance, and associates the sound of regulator discharge, boat motors or what-have-you with getting fed enough to go check it out.

Moray eels accustomed to getting lion fish sometimes accost dives in frighteningly direct, close quarters. Will a large tiger shark come get in somebody's face, or grab them, because it thinks they might have a fish?

Seems if that were likely we'd hear of a lot more cases of attacks. What seems more plausible is that these sharks, having a range of senses, can detect at some distance whether any of the humans have a crate with big hunks of dead fish, and if so which has it. If none of the above, the shark will likely move off.

A shark that doesn't move off is one we can't confirm shark feeding was a factor in, as that shark at some point was after something other than what shark feeders provide.

Tiger sharks aren't moray eels, alligators or bears. The practical realities of dealing with them may experientially be different than we might've anticipated.

Sharks didn't get where they are without a certain degree of awareness. Predators have to be efficient and that means sizing up what they're going after; sharks have a lot of senses to do that and they have to make a risk/reward decision. Moray eels, to use one of your examples, have notoriously bad eyesight and have been known to easily mistake an ungloved hand for food. The very first baited shark encounter I had was off Bimini in 2005 with the late Dr. Sonny Gruber; he emptied about 2/3 of the bait cooler over the side before waving us into the water and onto the trailing line behind the anchored boat. As soon as the bait ran out, the assembled Caribbean reef and blacknose sharks didn't stick by the boat or come over to see if we had goodies; they split like cats once the can is empty. We had gone snorkeling through the area just days before without bait and only saw a couple Caribbean reef sharks off in the distance.

 

[johndiver999]

If we accept the idea that tiger sharks move around (over a quarter of the Atlantic) with no discernible pattern' (and thus move in "random" ways) then how are people able to name and recognize the exact same individual shark coming to feed at the EXACT same wreck over multiple years for SEVERAL different individual sharks?

These observations/conclusions would seem to be mutually exclusive or are we being asked to accept coincidences of almost unimaginable statistical improbability?

 

[The Chairman]

These observations/conclusions would seem to be mutually exclusive or are we being asked to accept coincidences of almost unimaginable statistical improbability?

Such a sighting would be statistically indeterminate. There's simply no way to know if/when a specific species of shark might appear. To whit, I was doing a dive on the Spiegel Grove off of Key Largo (before she was righted) and saw a most peculiar shark a hundred feet away. It took only a moment and I understood why they called them pointers. Wow. A great white there in KL. What are the chances? Well, nobody knew back then and we still don't know. We don't have enough data points to ever know. I know they caught a Great White in Playa del Carmen a while ago. There are no walls in the ocean.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

If we accept the idea that tiger sharks move around (over a quarter of the Atlantic) with no discernible pattern' (and thus move in "random" ways) then how are people able to name and recognize the exact same individual shark coming to feed at the EXACT same wreck over multiple years for SEVERAL different individual sharks?

These observations/conclusions would seem to be mutually exclusive or are we being asked to accept coincidences of almost unimaginable statistical improbability?

When I say "no discernable pattern," I mean that there's nothing consistent between individuals - as in, you could have 10 sharks of the same size and gender tagged at the same of location which will then proceed to go 10 separate ways. There's no consensus whereby males go this way, females go that way, smaller sharks do something completely different from bigger sharks, etc. An individual may or may not have a specific pattern, although as described below it's a question of whether that is constant from year to year.

For a couple years in Jupiter we did have a somewhat predictable rotation of individuals through our main feeding area, although they were not the only tiger sharks around (we would see 4-6 "regulars" and shark or goliath grouper tagging missions in the area would get 14-16 tigers in one weekend). As time went on, we had regulars drop out entirely, skip years, and/or make only sporadic appearances. As previously stated, this is probably due to either the sharks changing their routine as they get older or environmental changes. In some years we would also get tigers that would check out the free food or just scope it from a distance but never come in. One tiger that showed up once in 2014 and maybe did a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flyby in 2015 probably stuck around the general area but never checked out the chow line again; in 2017 I rather randomly saw a photo from the annual Big Hammer Challenge of a tiger on the beach that had the same split dorsal and white patch on the side.

 

[johndiver999]

If individual sharks are moving randomly and without any pattern over a range that constitutes approximately 1/4 of the Atlantic Ocean (as was described above by Halcyon), then the probability that the same shark would make an appearance at the same wreck for multiple days over multiple years is NOT indicative of random motion. The wreck is too little and the described "random wandering range" is too large for me to accept the explanation of "random wanderings over 1/4 of the Atlantic".

It's sorta like the same (winning) lottery number being selected by one person for 3 years in a row on the same month of the year. Just seems that the assumption of "random wanderings" is contradicted by the frequency of repeated observation of the same shark at a unique location.

Unless of course, you might guess that these sharks DO move randomly, except when they are presented with unique and important feeding opportunities? Would that explanation fit the observations?