Bull Shark ate my DINNER!

[Walter]

You've missed the entire point.

When you shoot a fish, a shark may come to investigate. If you immediately give up your catch, you have started (or continued) to train that shark to associate people with food. If you do not give up the fish, the shark will usually leave. Why would you want to train the shark to be aggressive toward people? Down that route lies dead people, a dead shark or both. Once the shark gets to the point it's used to stealing fish from people, it needs to die.

 

[Wayward Son]

When the shark is on a dive site that gets hammered by every charter boat in town, yes, that shark will be harrassing other people -most of whom are not spearing- after I'm gone. I know divers who got assaulted by bull sharks right after rolling off a boat, before even having a chance to start the dive. No blood, no fish shot.

Don't feed it. Chase it off. Mostly that works. If it's aggressive enough that this doesn't work you may have to kill it. You may not, that's a call that you'll have to make at the time. Sometimes simply getting up off the bottom & slowly ascending to get the fish in the boat will work, without the shark following you up.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Cameras are great, but I can't eat pictures. I eat fish & lobsters, as well as deer & other things. I'm a predator. When it comes to fish, spearing is the method of take that has the least impact on the resource, i prefer to shoot what I eat rather than buy it & contribute to the waste of bycatch incurred through commercial means.

 

[Wayward Son]

And a lift bag to send the fish up is a good option, if you have someone in the boat who will retrieve it. If the boat is chained to the site -common up here, not so much for Howard & Muggsy- that's not so great an option. But for drift/float dives where the boat if free to maneuver it can be great. The downside is that if you send your stringer up & then get a shot at more fish, what do you do with them?

Keeping the fish in a bag seems to work well. Even though we've had some sharks come in when we've had them bagged, we have not had a shark zero in on a bag & try to eat it. They find it by smell from distance, but once up close sight does seem to play a big part with them finding the target.

 

[Desert_Diver]

If you hike in the backcountry, how often do you see a bear? If you kill a deer in the backcountry how much greater are your odds of seeing a bear?

In Hawaii, the griz are pretty scarce. In the Rockies you never see more than two to four at time (unless you are high above a valley- then I've seen between 10 and 15 at a time with the aid of field glasses). Bear are not stupid. The associate gun fire with bad things. The only problem you may have is that if the elk is too big to back pack out on one trip, you may not find anything on the second trip.

But animals do learn.

Art

 

[Walter]

Case in point, none of us were shooting fish.

 

[HowardE]

As it turns out... We hear that this shark does get somewhat aggressive to take people's catch. The question becomes - is it worth defending your catch for the sake of teaching a lesson to a shark that has already learned a lesson? Apparently this shark has a reputation, and is known...

 

[Wayward Son]

At that size it's likely a female. female bull sharks are larger than males & they max out at about 11 feet or so.

So far as the law goes, on the ast coast if you're over 3 miles out you can legally powerhead it & keep it. Shark steaks, a 10 ft or so bull will provide quite a few.

Inside 3 miles, you can only shoot or PH it as an act of defense. And then you may not keep it, you're required to just leave it for scavengers.

Given that she's a new spearo & not hunting with someone with some experience handling these things I would say that she's prolly not yet at the point of shooting it. Assuming she would at all for any reason.

Avoidance is a great thing. When hunting there, bag the fish. Don't feed this one. If it's sighted, send the bag up or keep it with you & go ahead & ascend, keeping your eyes on the shark. Watching each other's backs is a good idea, there may be more than 1 shark.

Either hold the bag in your hand or have a way to release it that you can do under strain. say a shark grabs it & you're being dragged. You need to be able to ditch it no matter what. Lemme go find something i posted a long time ago & get some pics.

 

[Wayward Son]

We're all familiar with what happens when mr. pushy shark wins the argument over who eats lunch. You get left with this (not my feet, just a pic off the web):

Now, I've been carrying my stringer rigged like this:

Problem is, if I have fish on and a large predator decides to grab them I might be going for a ride. Potentially a serious problem if I'm low on air at the time. With that brass clip on a D ring on my BC, I think it could be very difficult to release it if I'm being dragged by the stringer. I used a blown out rain day to modify it. I bought a utility strap with a quick release buckle at Walmart for about $2, and the I used a stitch-awl to sew the strapping the way I wanted it. I now have this:

AT least now if something grabs it and I need to get free, one pinch of the buckle will to the trick:

 

[HowardE]

Shooting it never crossed either of our minds. Also - we each had something to fend off a shark with - other than our hands and legs. That wasn't much of a thought.

I can honestly say we were startled to say the least. After doing 200+ dives on the east coast of Florida - this was honestly the largest shark we've seen PERIOD.

It certainly gave us insight into how we'd handle things next time.

Most likely - if she shoots anything large and bloody, it will get sent to the surface via the lift bag.

 

[DavidPT40]

I've had experience with a problem shark before, back in the 70s.

I was working as the local police chief at a small town on the island of Amity. It was just a small resort town, people from the mainland would come over for the summer to swim and lay out on the beach.

Anyways, we began having trouble with what I thought was a large shark. Some bathers had been injured. However, our mayor was not convinced. So I called upon a spunky young marine biologist from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He confirmed what I thought. It was not a boating accident that had injured (fatally) the bathers, and in his words "it certainly wasn't Jack the Ripper. It was a shark."

So after a few more minor attacks, I set off with Matt Hooper (the marine biologist), and a salty old fishermen (lets just call him "Q"). We had plans to eradicate this shark. We chummed and chummed, until finally we drew him in. We I first saw the shark, I was astounded. Its head was enormous. Matt thought it was a 20 footer, Q thought it was 25 feet.

Then disaster struck. After agitating the shark by shooting it with a spear-gun several times, it breached and landed on the back of our vessel. The transom was smashed to bits. Mr. Q slid right into the jaws of the massive shark, and was unfortunately eaten alive. Hooper had disappeared earlier while scuba diving, so now I was alone. The shark swam right up to me while I was rummaging inside the stricken vessel, so I threw an aluminum 80 into its mouth. Satisfied with its new prey for the moment, the massive shark swam backwards (I didn't know they could do that) and headed out to sea.

I climbed up to the top of the Crows Nest with an extra-long bang stick and a vintage World War II rifle. Out of nowhere, the shark surfaced right below me! I jabbed it with the bang stick, but it wouldnt detonate. Tiny pock marks appeared on the sharks head, but nothing else. The monster dissappeared beneath the waves once more, then I had an idea. The aluminum 80 was still in the sharks mouth! I remember Hooper telling me that compressed air could blow up the entire boat, I'm sure that it would mess up a shark too.

Out in the distance I saw a dorsal fin rise out of the water. It was the shark. *Kapow* I fired off a shot, harmlessly passing through the water next to the shark. "Come on, blow up" I said as I squeezed the trigger again, the shark racing towards me. Another miss. *Kapow* "Blow up!" I said louder as I missed again. *Kapow* Missed again. I looked down the iron sights of that old M1 Garand, aimed as best as I could, and yelled "Smile you sono************!" *Kaboom!* The bullet struck the air tank and the shark exploded into ten thousand pieces. It was dead! Then Hooper surfaced (he had been resting on the bottom) and we swam back to shore on some old barrels.