Bull Shark ate my DINNER!

[Wayward Son]

A 10 ft bull is an impressive fish. Once they pass about 7 ft, they suddenly start getting way thicker. Each foot in length turns them into a substantially larger fish. The last one I saw was maybe 9 feet or so, & it looked like it was 2 ft across the top of the head. Ask Puff about it, he was with us on that dive. Fortunately i was above it (I was the only one with fish) & it stayed on the bottom, didn't come up after us. It was late enough in the dive that we simply went back up the line slowly, did our stop & back in the boat without incident. Then fred & I had 2 small ones come in at the end of the next drop, once again with me being the one with the fish. But they also stayed on the bottom. makes it easy when they do that.

 

[Gombessa]

To the sharkwatchers (and chargers) out there:

Do sharks generally respond to size? If you're in the water with a buddy, and a shark in the water gets a bit overly aggressive, is it generally of use to do the "swim aggresively toward the shark" manuever with arms locked, so you may look more like one large, (glass-eyed) creature? I imagine you want to stay close for a number of other reasons, but is there general wisdom in this area?

 

[ONESPEED]

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.

 

[frankc420]

I bet you named that shark... Jawz?

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

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

NTIM, I was born just a few miles from the Continental Divide and most of my family lives less than 100 miles from the 'divide. Bears stay away from gunfire but a bow hunter's wounded buck might be heard or smelled by a bear. I doubt there is much danger for hunters, sorry for the bear anology. Here's a few bear links and quotes.

http://www.sinapu.org/Pages/Bears/Grizzly_Bears.htm

records indicate that the last wild grizzly bear in Colorado was killed in 1979 in the South San Juans.

http://www.grizzlybear.org/gbmap/nmmap.html

The last grizzly in New Mexico was killed in 1931. This was also the year in which the last grizzly in Oregon was killed (Murray 1992, page 236).

http://www.grizzlybear.org/gbmap/utmap.html

Grizzlies were eradicated from Utah over 70 years ago. The last known grizzly, was killed by a sheepherder, Frank Clark, on August 22, 1923.

http://www.wildernessutah.com/brain/blackbears.html

Black bears are secretive creatures, preferring the dense cover of forest. If you see one, count yourself lucky.

You can go to areas in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to see brown bear. You could go to Seal Island, SA to see great whites. You could also go to Laysan Island when the albatross are fledging to see tiger sharks. Where are the best places to see bull sharks and why are they there?

 

[Rick Murchison]

This is an interesting thread.
I understand y'all's desire to "not train the shark," but I also don't believe in fighting a shark for a catch. After all, if he wins, as is often the case, (per your photos above) what training has he gotten now???
I especially don't think "keeping the catch close" is a good idea at all.
I've been spearing for a few years now... since about '61, and on Scuba since the early 70's. In the early years I have done battle with more than a few sharks, and killed more than a handful over 200 pounds.
But...
I haven't had to kill a shark or fight one for my catch in over 30 years.
The system we use now, if we have a down-line, is to clip the catch off to the down line. If we're free-boating, we shoot the catch to the surface on a bag. If a shark shows up we quit hunting and surface. Using this system, I can count the catches we've lost in 30 years on one hand. On the rare occasion when a shark has taken a catch, he hasn't had any close encounters with spearos, just found the fish and decided to eat it. But that's really rare. Indeed, it's surprising, but almost all the time the shark will lose interest in the catch entirely unless one of the strung fish is still struggling.
Bottom line, using our system we haven't had to kill any sharks, and we haven't lost enough catch to spit at. Indeed, the biggest stringer we ever lost was when we hung the down line up in the dive site structure at 90' and we didn't have the bottom time or the surface interval available to go retrieve it.
Rick

 

[Wayward Son]

We've done that too, mostly with good results. One day Travis had shot 3 red snapper off one end of a bridge span, he was swimming back over the top of it to clip the stringer off to the downline which was chained off at the other end.

A 6 ft bull came up from behind him & took his stringer out of his hand. So far as we know, it's still somewhere out in the sand off the end of that span, LOL.

He went a long time without ever seeing a shark. Wanted to real bad. He'd shoot a snapper, gut it & lay it on the road bed & watch to see if a shark would show up. Never did. Then the year that Ivan hit us, that fall was thick with sharks. We didn't have a trip for several months without running into them. By that Christmas, he'd seen -and fought off- enough sharks to make him happy for the rest of his life, will be happy to never see another one. At least while spearing

Last summer was pretty bad for them, I didn't get to dive as much but every trip brought sharks. So far all has worked out well for me, though & all that I've seen are still swimming.

 

[photohikedive]

Last summer was pretty bad for them, I didn't get to dive as much but every trip brought sharks. So far all has worked out well for me, though & all that I've seen are still swimming.

as I remember, you blamed me. then you tried using me as a diversion for all the sharks, keeping your bleeding fish near my head.

trust me, if a shark got too close, I would have chuck norrised it, and it would be crab bait.

 

[Wayward Son]

I think it was you, you attracted them. I'd pay money to see you Chuckie a bull shark. Not much, but some

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I find more information on tiger sharks in Hawaii than bull sharks in Florida. Thousands of tigers have been killed since Hawaii became a US state with no discernable change in attack frequency. Additionally, often many tigers were killed shortly after attacks and none were ever even remotely identified as the attacker. Tiger sharks move around a very large territory here, visiting the same spots infrequently, and are most likely long gone shortly after an attack. Tiger sharks are no longer culled after our infrequent attacks. Freedivers keep their string on their SMB, I don't know of anybody that scuba dives with a gun and scuba divers don't get bit by tigers.

As far as Atlantic bull sharks go, I found this statement repeated by many sites.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/descript/bullshark/bullshark.htm

In the western Atlantic bull sharks migrate north along the coast of the U.S. during summer, swimming as far north as Massachusetts, and then return to tropical climates when the coastal waters cool.

I have years of reef shark pictures at the same dive sites and can show you resident white tips monthly at the same site for years. Does anyone have bull shark pictures of the same shark repeatedly at the same site? My 200 dives off Key Largo were not at sites frequented by hunters and the other divers did not seem concerned with bull sharks other than we couldn't get close enough for a decent photo of the two I saw. If there are popular dive sites where hunters and non-hunters are regularly harrassed by bull sharks, wouldn't it seem reasonable that it is the hunters activity that is causing danger to humans, not the sharks behavior? It's not the shark's fault he is behaving like a shark, killing a shark to protect your catch is only protecting your catch!