Shark Feeding Dives...Yes or No

[100days-a-year]

It doesn't raise awareness .
It will end up conditioning some sharks to associate divers and boats with food and some of them will die when spearfisherman or fishermen kill the aggressive ones. More than would have died otherwise.

 

[NothingClever]

I‘m headed to Yellowstone and Glacier next week to cross country ski my way in for some winter camping.

I think I’ll drag in my pulk with supplementary nutrition to feed some wolves and moose. When the bears wake up in the Spring, I’ll feed them, too.

If the Park Rangers give me any grief, I’ll just tell them the experts on ScubaBoard said feeding wild animals was OK.

 

[tursiops]

One additional discussion I've had with plenty of pro photographers is their Strobe lights. They all agree strobe re-cycling brings sharks closer. A couple of them suggest on our deep ledge drifts that they will re-cycle their strobes a couple of times if no sharks are visible just to bring them in (like the plastic bottle trick). But opinions vary and those guys try to save battery life.

That might be the electrical field around the strobe during the recycling. The sharks can sense that. One shark expert analogized for me the sensitivity of a shark's electroreceptors as being able to detect the e-field from a D-cell whose terminals were a mile and a half apart.

 

[mcohen1021]

This is all the more important if we're talking a tiger shark instead of reef sharks.

I can definitely agree with that! All we had were caribbean reef sharks, as it was the Eleuthera/Exuma itinerary

 

[drrich2]

But I think that the idea that shark feeding dives furthers conservation and shark education is a stretch

The portion of the human population that actively participates in ocean activities is small. It's smaller those that spend the time and money to get SCUBA certified and continue diving. And it's smaller still those willing and desiring to participate in a shark feeding dive.

I agree in terms of how this is likely to impact general public opinion. Most of the general public is barely aware of the recreational dive hobby (if they are aware of it!).

What I have in mind is the potential dive dive operators, their staff and some affiliated local businesses, and perhaps some local divers who use them, have to show up and weigh in when conservation topics come up in policy decisions. For example if there's a proposed change in shark fishing or other regulations apt to impact sharks.

Recently, there was a SB thread on Florida considering opening up limited harvesting of goliath grouper. And of course, I think there was an option to e-mail some representative with our opinion. But most of us aren't Florida residents, much less business owners or constituents. How much weight does it carry when an unknown peon like me from another state e-mails and says 'I like big fish, and I cannot lie,' so save the goliath grouper? Vs. voting Florida resident fisherman pushing to be allowed to take them?

A local contingent of businesses and involved residents recognized as legitimate stakeholders may have at least a little pull. Once in a great while, in a close struggle, they might turn the tide. I can hope!

 

[scubadada]

Hi @drrich2

I would not underestimate your potential influence. You vote with your feet and with your money. You have chosen to visit Florida on at least a couple of occasions. You supported hotels, restaurants, dive operators... Your example of the Goliath Grouper is a good one. I would imagine a good number of divers visit Florida to participate in aggregation. This is likely also true for turtle season, Lemon Shark aggregation, the opportunity to simply see sharks... These are all good reasons to support the good health of our seas and sea life.

 

[mcohen1021]

You guys have any idea how many people saw my Bahamas shark pics and were telling me I was crazy?

I always tell them Jaws and Sharkweek are B-llsh--t... LOL

 

[Johnoly]

And just to stir the water in the opposite direction.....
Millions of people watch/participate in feeding dolphins and that's OK.
Cause Dolphins are cute but sharks are misunderstood and therefore scary.

{ Education eliminates fear }

 

[scubadada]

Hi @Johnoly

I would never dream of doing a captive dolphin activity. I have really only had 2 close dolphin experiences while scuba diving in SE FL, both in Boynton Beach, while diving solo. The first on was somewhere on the inside reef. I was drifting north. First, one dolphin, heading south swam just a foot or two from me and looked me in the eye, then a second came swimming slowly by and did the same thing. The second encounter was while swimming across the reef, from the outside to the inside. About half way over I saw a dolphin in front of me, then a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth. They swam 3 circles around me, as close as a foot or two, checking me out, and then slowly swam off. It was magical One of the top encounters I've ever had

 

[HalcyonDaze]

It doesn't raise awareness .
It will end up conditioning some sharks to associate divers and boats with food and some of them will die when spearfisherman or fishermen kill the aggressive ones. More than would have died otherwise.

Except those complaints from fishermen aren't just confined to areas where baited tours occur. Listening to some of the NOAA Highly Migratory Species calls, you'd swear from the anecdotes that it's impossible to pull a fish in from Cape Cod around to Texas without sharks picking them off (funnily enough, there seem to be plenty of folks on the fishing forums posting photos with full decks). It's almost like sharks are going to take an interest in fishing activity regardless of whether divers are dishing out Scooby snacks in the neighborhood ... gee, do you think they normally eat fish?

Baiting more reliably brings in more species for closer encounters. Some sharks don't seem to come in unless they've been fed, either on the current dive or others. This is a good thing. I think one of the concerns with shark feeding out of Jupiter was that tiger sharks might start approaching random divers and swimmers hoping for handouts (and maybe on occasion take a test bite in the absence of their usual treats) - thankfully I've not heard of that becoming a problem.

I don't know how well which sounds work on which species, but it's something to be careful of. A few years back I wanted a video from a deep dive at some overseas location where a guy tried the bottle trick, and things got wild. It may've been this one, Shark Attack at 57 meters in Papua New Guinea (if you're impatient, drag the slider to 1:15 and the action starts seconds afterward).

Unless I were with at least one buddy I trusted to watch my blind spots, I'd be leery of trying that stunt (but, much like with feeding dives, I'd be game to watch someone else do it).

Now if you're talking about using a pole to loudly poke a rock so area sharks will think a speargun went off, that might be conditional on what the area sharks have grown accustomed to (e.g.: is there much spear fishing?).

The main thing is that trying to attract sharks isn't like voodoo; they aren't conjured out of the depths when blood goes in the water or a plastic bottle goes crunch. No matter how sharp their senses are, the stimulus has to get to them and has to be clear enough that it doesn't get lost in the background of the ocean. On a ripping day in Jupiter, the current might be doing three knots and change. That means if we do two dives on a site with an hour surface interval, the scent trail has gone 10 nautical miles after three hours. If a shark comes across that, then it still has to swim upstream to the source, probably at a slow speed of advance. So in order to get sharks by the second dive, at most they're coming from four or five nautical miles downstream. If there aren't any swimming across that plume in the timeframe, no joy. Right before the plague hit, I did a weeklong trip in Cabo trying to get makos and blues; the boat would motor offshore and then we would set up to drift with a chum line, flashers, and even a "Mako Magnet" electromagnetic lure. We got completely skunked two days out of five, had only one mako give us a boom-and-zoom another day, and on the two days when we actually had sharks come in and stick around it took at least three hours to get the first fin.

Short form, at locations where shark diving is consistently successful they're already in the area; they just might not be in the rather limited visual range of divers before they hear or smell something interesting. How hard it is to attract them depends on the circumstances. If I remember correctly at Guadalupe Island our boat didn't chum but instead the crew would splash the wrangle baits (tuna tied to lines). After a few hours that was enough to get the first customers and then after that we had a pretty steady stream of visiting white sharks.