Florida Shark Diving

[NothingClever]

I’m considering doing a shark dive here in Florida. I have mixed feelings about it but just wanted to know what others on here who have done them thought about their experience?

I’m pretty flexible and subscribe to the Chairman’s philosophy of dive and let dive but there is one area where I draw the line.

I think baited observation is unacceptable and the people that endorse it register squarely on my radar as folks to avoid and whose judgment and logic I find perverted.

I’m from the Rocky Mountains and when I lived there I went for hikes in the high country all the time. I went there to enjoy the vistas and the challenges. Over the years I saw plenty of elk, an occasional black bear, Rocky Mtn Bighorn Sheep, eagles, an occasional mountain lion, etc.

NEVER EVER in my time in Colorado, whether one was liberal or conservative, have I heard of people going for hikes and putting food out to attract bears, Bighorn sheep, mountain lions, etc. As you might intuitively imagine, it’s the opposite. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the National Forest Service emphasize a tidy camp, neutral use of trails and hanging your food out of reach to prevent unnatural interactions that compel behavior change where otherwise there would be none. To go on camping hikes and start putting out food to try to see a black bear would garner immediate and widespread bi-partisan condemnation.

I see diving in Florida no differently. It’s a hike through the natural world.

So, those folks that advocate for shark-feeding for tourism purposes are folks who run way south of my band of tolerance. I find feeding an abusive indulgence to satisfy lazy, myopic, selfish tourists and I see the associated profits from it as wholly unvirtuous.

I make no apologies if my post is contentious and pointed.

Jupiter Dive Center doesn’t feed. Lisa, the owner, knows the season to see sharks and will get you there without stooping to lame Russian circus tricks. I’ve dived with JDC three times and saw so many sharks it seemed like pigeons in a park.

Follow your gut.

 

[drrich2]

The counter argument is that real world experience hasn't strongly supported making an equivalence between widely divergent animal species from very different habitat types (e.g.: feeding bears vs. feeding tiger sharks). In my Emerald Charters write-up, I tried to reflect both sides and links to threads where they've been (often hotly) debated.

It's a personal choice. Whatever you decide, have a good dive trip.

 

[Dan]

Looks like a lot of the dive operations are out of Jupiter.

Scuba Works is pretty good. I saw 3 kinds of sharks when I dived there 2 years ago.

 

[PoolsOpen]

Good suggestions by plenty here...

Im just gonna add that if you want non baited dives, mid Jan to late Feb is lemon shark season in Jupiter. Both Jupiter Dive Center and Kyalami Charters will schedule a site called lemon drop. Group will be surrounded by several large lemon sharks and they will get close and bump you.

If you prefer more of a distance, go do the Jupiter wreck treck during the same time of year. The lemons will be swimming behind the last wreck and you can just watch from the aft deck..

 

[NothingClever]

Good suggestions by plenty here...

Im just gonna add that if you want non baited dives, mid Jan to late Feb is lemon shark season in Jupiter. Both Jupiter Dive Center and Kyalami Charters will schedule a site called lemon drop. Group will be surrounded by several large lemon sharks and tney will get close and bump you.

If you prefer more of a distance, go do the Jupiter wreck treck during the same time of year. The lemons will be swimming behind the last wreck and you can just watch from the aft deck..

Bullseye, mate!

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Do not feed the sharks down here! That is a big NO NO!

The cool thing about Key's this time of year is that sharks are everywhere. If your bayside, on a dock, look down in the water and you will probably see a few without getting wet.

If your at the reefs, you will see a verity of sharks and rays without any enticement. If you in Palm Beach or Stuart you will not see the same wildlife, you have to entice them to attract them up there.

Guess I haven't been to the Keys in a while. All the years diving Key Largo, besides nurse sharks I've only seen one small Caribbean reef shark on Molasses Reef. That's not to say they aren't there - I've had friends sight bulls and sandbars on some of the deeper wrecks, and when I was doing seagrass surveys from a boat on the backside of Islamorada the bay was a bonanza of small lemon sharks, bonnetheads, and one juvenile tiger - but compared to the Jupiter area I'd say the odds of seeing anything besides nurse sharks are lower on the Keys reefs. I'd be interested to get out to Dry Tortugas or actually do the drop-offs on the reefs to compare; what makes the Jupiter area so special is that it's right on the Gulf Stream and therefore you pick up whatever is passing through.

Jupiter area, depending on the season I'd say you have a good chance of picking up lemons or bulls without bait on certain sites - certain wrecks and reefs for the lemons, bulls on the Jupiter Deep Ledge. The lemons will probably get curious regardless; bulls tend to be standoffish without a treat box or spearfishing. I've got so many good closeup shots of lemons that if it was just them I wouldn't bother with baited trips; bulls however I've had to work for closeups (I've noticed they're ballsier with freedivers than people on SCUBA). Those two species are typically around all year but wax and wane in abundance. Then around spring we see a few tigers and great hammerheads move in; getting those without bait is possible but it's long-shot lottery odds (and with bait there's no guarantees). Summertime is when the silky, sandbar, and dusky sharks move into the Deep Ledge area; you might get lucky and spot a smooth or scalloped hammerhead as well, or maybe blacktips.

The temperament note is key. I can have lemon sharks all over me and while they aren't to be totally disregarded, I'm not concerned. Bulls, I have a lot of respect for how much damage they might do, but on SCUBA they typically keep a respectful distance. Tigers will get up close and personal in a baited situation and keep me on my toes; that's an animal that can do serious damage if you aren't watching. Hammerheads are typically so darn skittish getting a good shot is problematic. Silkys and Caribbean reef sharks don't have much respect for personal space and they have enough teeth to keep me concerned; sandbars are fairly meek and duskys tend to keep their distance unless they have a numbers advantage. Those are just generalizations; under different circumstances or with different individuals things might change.

 

[drrich2]

In a trip to Key Largo with 20 dives in 2013, I saw a few Caribbean reef sharks (I think nurse sharks, too); the reef sharks were skittish and the Rainbow Reef Dive Center guides had little mirrors, which they held out and wiggled (I think to create the shiny moving look of a thrashing fish). They weren't numerous and tended to keep a distance or move on.

The Bahamas and Turks & Caicos (the Caicos area; I don't know about Grand Turk) have a rep. for Caribbean reef sharks. I've been to Turks & Caicos via live-aboard, and yes, we saw some. That works. I've read Stuart's Cove does baited dives with reef sharks, but you can see them without baiting in the Bahamas and T&C.

In the Caymans (2016) and St. Croix (2017), Caribbean reef sharks came around us at a slower pace, closer, made some passes, and I took this to likely be a hold-over from past shark feeding. A guide in St. Croix told me the reef sharks used to be deeper, down around 90 feet, but people fed them lion fish and they started patrolling shallower reefs. People quit giving them lion fish (from what I understand), but when I was there in 2017, it was a good place to see reef sharks pretty close up without feeding. I saw them in 2015 while live-aboard diving out of Belize; a couple made life interesting for a guide carrying a speared lion fish, and on one dive one maybe 5 feet long entertained us on a baited dive (dead lion fish in a perforated 5-gallon bucket).

Saw nurse sharks and some small black tips (I believe they were) in Cozumel in 2018, but the black tips aren't a reliable thing.

My point is, if you want to see Caribbean reef sharks without baiting, there are a number of places you can go with good odds if you do a bunch of dives.

One place at this point in my life wouldn't go...oceanic white-tip diving near Cat Island in the Bahamas. I don't know whether they bait or not. I've read about diving with a few of those sharks...too rich for my blood.

Richard.

P.S.: I am not inclined to try the 'waving the mirror' and similar tricks. An article in Alert Diver online, A Shark Tale, by Mary Maguire, describes a reef shark incident:

"Art had just speared two lionfish and was heading back to the boat when he attracted the attention of a couple of 3- to 5-foot-long Caribbean reef sharks. They were drawn by the fish blood and dying movements of the fish on the end of the spear. One shark swam up under Art as he made his way toward the boat. As the shark opened its mouth and headed toward the fish, he encountered Art's left hand instead. Art says it was sudden, unexpected and painful. He tucked his fist under his right armpit and continued to the boat, where he handed up his fish. Sue and Paula then helped him aboard, applied a pressure dressing and helped him remove his suit. There was a lot of blood. Art doesn't remember any of this."

As long as there is no food in the water, or I'm not holding it, I don't worry about reef sharks. Here's a video showing a diver rubbing a bottle on a very deep dive in Papua New Guinea, another trick to draw sharks. Well, it worked...

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Yeah, after experiencing Caribbean reef sharks in baited and unbaited situations I prefer the latter. The last shark trip I did we were drift snorkeling over the Jupiter Deep Ledge with a bait crate; our first customers were three smallish Caribbean reef sharks and it was actually a relief when eight adult bulls showed up and sent them packing.

 

[scubadada]

I probably saw the most Reef Sharks in Turks & Caicos off West Caicos and French Cay.

 

[nolatom]

I'm on occasional Jupiter diver when visiting friends nearby,

I've been on one of those hand-feed dives with Randy a good while ago, didn't seek it out, but that's what they were doing that day. I found it interesting as a one-time thing but no need to keep at it. I think I also noticed that he was missing part of a finger?

Much more interesting and meaningful for me was a live-drop in February for the Lemons, where we kept our distance and tried not to "influence" them. They told us to level off and stay "quiet" at 70' while bottom was 90, and let the Lemons pass beneath us at about 80'.

And so they did, heading south while we idled facing north, it was perfect, 4 or 5 of them, then to my surprise they circled back around and again passed beneath us, except one I recall was above us this time. We were told (or maybe i heard later?) that these are pregnant females who need just the right water temp (about 74) during that phase of gestation. Then later on they head over to the Bahamas to give birth.

Way cool. They had a purpose, we got to see it without "interacting" with them so as to affect their behavior much. I'd rather be an observer at a respectful distance, This was ideal, at least for me.