Diving With Sharks

[Zach The Diver]

I just want to preempt this post by saying I’m not simply asking “is it safe to dive with sharks?” I know it is generally and I’ve dove with several species, including bull sharks in the Gulf of Mexico and a sixgill encounter in Washington.

I’m going to the lemon shark congregation in West Palm Beach later this month and may encounter other species such as tigers and hammerheads. The practice enforced by one charter in the area is the use of all-black or dark gear including fins and hood- ostensibly to promote safety and avoid grabbing the sharks’ attention. This particular organization feeds sharks which I don’t really condone and won’t encourage by participating. The charter I’m going with does not feed or chum to encourage shark encounters, but I have no info on any particular required or expected configuration strictly for sharks.

I’ve seen plenty of other shops and charters the world over not enforce these precautions via YouTube. Seems to be prevalent in many bluewater shark hotspots such as Fiji and the Bahamas.

It also seems that every “shark dive” video I see involves loosely congregated divers either standing on the bottom feeding the sharks or going completely vertical. There seems to be a preponderance of frankly poor dive skills and practices on the part of many of the divers and guides on these, which circles back to my point regarding standard practice and safety. I AM aware that completely breaking trim is preferred by some divers around sharks so they can visually reference their whole body which I can somewhat understand.

My question is this to you all who have participated in “shark dives”, are there deviations or equipment configurations that work better or mitigate uncertainty and risk with these animals that verifiably work? Is there any legitimacy in following something like “wear all dark” when you are feeding these predators?

Again, I’m not suggesting that it’s necessarily unsafe to dive with sharks. My personal rule is I’ll get in the water with any shark that is not great white or oceanic whitetip, and I’d probably end up breaking my own rule and stay down if I ever saw one of those two species while diving because of how awe-inspiring they are. I’m wondering why these perceptions and approaches to shark diving exist and why something buoyancy and trim are not seen as important but a dark set of fins are?

From my point of view maintaining conventionally good dive practices (buoyancy control, trim, situational awareness, and team diving) and minimizing or mitigating clearly risky activities such as feeding and spearfishing should be considered “enough” when intentionally diving in the presence of sharks in nearly all situations.

This is a loaded post but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[Johnoly]

I’m going to the lemon shark congregation in West Palm Beach later this month and may encounter other species such as tigers and hammerheads.

I hope other WPB divers will chime in too.

The biggest problem you'll have with the Lemon aggregation is FINDING THEM !! It's not that easy since several factors are at play. The males are following the females who 90% of the time don't want to be near them. So the group will move to a new location, but they will be out in the hilly sand not the reef. The 2nd most important thing is you need a pretty good moderate current. Lemons can't easily pump water thru their gills while laying in the sand like nurse sharks can. That current will allow them to lay right next to the female in the middle of the sand along with 10-20 of her friends. If you have less than 1 knot of current, the lemons will be swimming, not sitting.

Getting close to the pairs is very difficult because she will get up and move up stream where you can't follow her. Since it mating season, they could care less what you are wearing including a 3 foot sign that says "Eat Me", They are so focused on mating that even food doesn't matter.(your results might differ, lol). The lemon mating season is very short with the peak on/about Jan 25th and then the majority of them are gone by Feb 15, although we have our year round resident lemons too. Just not bunched up laying on the sand. Tigers peak was really last month(Dec) and they usually stay near the Jupiter wreck trek. Hammers peak is March 10th or abouts. Unless you are spearfishing, baiting (and of course holding a camera) it's pretty hard to get the Lemons, Tigers & especially hammers to come within photo distance. I wish you the best of luck on conditions and the captain finding them.

 

[NothingClever]

I cover up with dark material except for my hands. I like gloves with white palms because they make it easier to see hand signals at distance. Most of the pairs I've had are black on the back so when you ball your fist, the white pretty much disappears. Don't construe that as "essential kit", not by any stretch. Just what I like.

You're very likely to see some sharks on your trip. Those of us that dive several times a month from Jupiter and WPB don't really do anything special. Float along and keep your head on a swivel - they'll show up eventually. Last Sunday we saw a mature HH, a Lemon that passed us twice and two nurse sharks. On Saturday, we saw a healthy bull shark at the end of each dive.

If you feel like the sharks are getting too curious, just go vertical and they'll increase their distance. Most of the time I stay in trim and turn on a modified frog kick that gives me really good propulsion without a lot of movement so they don't spook but allows me to stay with them as long as possible (if they're just meandering). Sometimes I lose the dive group but no drama - I just send up a DSMB and when I surface I'm usually not more than 100m from the group.

I'm totally against charters that feed and won't dive with them. I don't pick fights with other divers over it but "baited observation" just isn't the wildlife model that I grew up with in Colorado. Nothing would unite far right Republicans and far left Democrats like some yahoo dumping a bunch of meat on the ground to bring in bears for tourists to watch. To me, feeding sharks is no different. It's an artificial stimulation that promotes an unhealthy behavioral change and done simply to satisfy impatient human curiosity and make a buck. The charters that have everybody kneel or stand in a circle are just cornball dorky, IMO.

Many of us see sharks all the time without any feeding involved and that's with charters who steer clear of where the feeding charters frequent.

Have fun!

 

[Living4Experiences]

From my experience, there's no universal standard of practice when doing feeding dives with sharks. I am skeptical of the "only wear black" rule, and I suspect that's a rule that the operator came up with out of an abundance of caution. I have always worn my brightly-colored fins.

It depends on how the sharks are fed. There could be a chumsickle hanging in the water for an all-out frenzy and the divers stay a distance back and just watch, but you can feel free to move around the area for a different vantage point. Then there's the hand-feeding with the feeder in the center of a circle or a U-shape and the divers are overweighted to stay planted on the bottom. In this type of dive, no standing is allowed because they want you in a low-profile position with fewer body parts moving around.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I hope other WPB divers will chime in too.

The biggest problem you'll have with the Lemon aggregation is FINDING THEM !! It's not that easy since several factors are at play. The males are following the females who 90% of the time don't want to be near them. So the group will move to a new location, but they will be out in the hilly sand not the reef. The 2nd most important thing is you need a pretty good moderate current. Lemons can't easily pump water thru their gills while laying in the sand like nurse sharks can. That current will allow them to lay right next to the female in the middle of the sand along with 10-20 of her friends. If you have less than 1 knot of current, the lemons will be swimming, not sitting.

Getting close to the pairs is very difficult because she will get up and move up stream where you can't follow her. Since it mating season, they could care less what you are wearing including a 3 foot sign that says "Eat Me", They are so focused on mating that even food doesn't matter.(your results might differ, lol). The lemon mating season is very short with the peak on/about Jan 25th and then the majority of them are gone by Feb 15, although we have our year round resident lemons too. Just not bunched up laying on the sand. Tigers peak was really last month(Dec) and they usually stay near the Jupiter wreck trek. Hammers peak is March 10th or abouts. Unless you are spearfishing, baiting (and of course holding a camera) it's pretty hard to get the Lemons, Tigers & especially hammers to come within photo distance. I wish you the best of luck on conditions and the captain finding them.

View attachment 878120

Bit of a clarification - as far as we know, the winter lemon shark aggregation is not for mating. That happens in the May/June timeframe; around that time is when we'll see the females going around covered in fresh bite marks and say "damn lady, you had a wild night." As they have a one-year gestation period (and then require another year to reload their ovaries before mating again), that's also when we'll see the newborn pups in the mangroves and on the seagrass flats.

I don't think anyone has quite figured out what the winter aggregation was about (likewise, around the same time of year we get reports of mixed-gender groups of smalltooth sawfish piling up in places, but they aren't scarred up from mating - that's seen down in the Keys later in the year). It's possible it's some kind of mixer beforehand, but it seems temperature dependent (one hypothesis for why the aggregations have gotten harder to find in the last 10-15 years is that warmer water pushed them north; they seemed to prefer to chill in the low 70s). In Jupiter and Palm Beach we definitely have resident and winter seasonal lemon sharks; the most memorable of the latter was a male we called "Garbage Guts" because over three winters (2015-2017) we saw him pass an entire spearfishing stringer out his stomach the hard way (not out the front door, not out the back door - he took a couple years to push it through the side of his abdomen).

I just want to preempt this post by saying I’m not simply asking “is it safe to dive with sharks?” I know it is generally and I’ve dove with several species, including bull sharks in the Gulf of Mexico and a sixgill encounter in Washington.

I’m going to the lemon shark congregation in West Palm Beach later this month and may encounter other species such as tigers and hammerheads. The practice enforced by one charter in the area is the use of all-black or dark gear including fins and hood- ostensibly to promote safety and avoid grabbing the sharks’ attention. This particular organization feeds sharks which I don’t really condone and won’t encourage by participating. The charter I’m going with does not feed or chum to encourage shark encounters, but I have no info on any particular required or expected configuration strictly for sharks.

I’ve seen plenty of other shops and charters the world over not enforce these precautions via YouTube. Seems to be prevalent in many bluewater shark hotspots such as Fiji and the Bahamas.

It also seems that every “shark dive” video I see involves loosely congregated divers either standing on the bottom feeding the sharks or going completely vertical. There seems to be a preponderance of frankly poor dive skills and practices on the part of many of the divers and guides on these, which circles back to my point regarding standard practice and safety. I AM aware that completely breaking trim is preferred by some divers around sharks so they can visually reference their whole body which I can somewhat understand.

My question is this to you all who have participated in “shark dives”, are there deviations or equipment configurations that work better or mitigate uncertainty and risk with these animals that verifiably work? Is there any legitimacy in following something like “wear all dark” when you are feeding these predators?

Again, I’m not suggesting that it’s necessarily unsafe to dive with sharks. My personal rule is I’ll get in the water with any shark that is not great white or oceanic whitetip, and I’d probably end up breaking my own rule and stay down if I ever saw one of those two species while diving because of how awe-inspiring they are. I’m wondering why these perceptions and approaches to shark diving exist and why something buoyancy and trim are not seen as important but a dark set of fins are?

From my point of view maintaining conventionally good dive practices (buoyancy control, trim, situational awareness, and team diving) and minimizing or mitigating clearly risky activities such as feeding and spearfishing should be considered “enough” when intentionally diving in the presence of sharks in nearly all situations.

This is a loaded post but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

As far as other species - generally, the rule is they have better vision than you and are really good at staying just out of sight unless there's something that warrants a closer look. Aside from mugging spearfishers, usually when you see a great hammerhead around Palm Beach it's a ghost on the edge of your vision and you try not to move, breathe, or have your stomach growl in the hope it'll get closer. I've only gotten a couple proof-of-life shots in the past few years, and that's on baited dives. Tigers likewise usually stay out of sight unless there's something to draw them in; unlike the hammerheads though they do command a lot of respect because they're ambush predators that can do a lot of damage. Just make sure to look around periodically (and don't swim like a cripple). Bull sharks can run hot or cold; usually hot requires a) food and b) numerical superiority (say what you will about shark brains, but I feel they're definitely capable of counting up the number of divers and the number of sharks and if the latter exceeds the former they get a lot bolder).

Regarding gear - the color restrictions are there for the feeding ops because divers are in an environment where hors d'oeuvres are in the water, and you don't want a pale flapping hand, dive fin, or flowing blonde hair to get mistaken for a fish scrap. If you're diving with them and food isn't on offer, having dark-colored gear doesn't hurt but the risk is pretty low (best to avoid the combination of high contrast and erratic movement though).

Finally, I do hear the "going vertical" bit for shark dives, but honestly I don't buy into it. The important thing is to keep eyes on them at all times and put yourself in the best position to fend off if necessary; for me that's level and head-on so that my arms and camera are entirely between the rest of me and the shark.

 

[TMHeimer]

You guys are crazy, but I said that 20 years ago.

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

I'm totally against charters that feed and won't dive with them. I don't pick fights with other divers over it but "baited observation" just isn't the wildlife model that I grew up with in Colorado. Nothing would unite far right Republicans and far left Democrats like some yahoo dumping a bunch of meat on the ground to bring in bears for tourists to watch. To me, feeding sharks is no different. It's an artificial stimulation that promotes an unhealthy behavioral change and done simply to satisfy impatient human curiosity and make a buck.

Many of us see sharks all the time without any feeding involved and that's with charters who steer clear of where the feeding charters frequent.

Have fun!

AGREE 100%.. but that's not what this thread is about....


Continue on...

 

[happy-diver]

Ha ha ha ha ha, all you want is some buoyancy

Let go of my console here to be ready for the other shark coming up behind the shark you can see

Here pretty pretty

Riding a shark without saddle or bridle is challenging yeah

Must find my paralenz footage, some good close encounters of the many sharks kind on there

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Just suck your stomach in and go

Extra Magnificent!!!

Did my self reliant with these guys, maskless swim, I keep my eyes open was cool!!!

 

[Still Kicking]

Float along and keep your head on a swivel...

I don't want my leg on a swivel...

 

[scubaozy]

Finally, I do hear the "going vertical" bit for shark dives, but honestly I don't buy into it. The important thing is to keep eyes on them at all times and put yourself in the best position to fend off if necessary; for me that's level and head-on so that my arms and camera are entirely between the rest of me and the shark.

Some shark species "size each other" to establish dominance and this is done by showing off their size horizontally. By establishing vertical position, your body language does not provoke or challenge, thus less chance of aggression. Whether you buy or not, message from your posture is, I am not challenging nor looking like your food.
Beside, on a vertical position, it is easier to do 180 deg turn to keep your eye on the shark.

Recommendations - SharkSchool™ | Interactive shark diving and education

There are things that should be done or avoided when being among sharks, likewise there are ways how to interfere when someone is in trouble in the vicinity of a shark. Recommendations are only as good as the respective tests and experiments have shown to be.

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