At the risk of getting my head bit off (please pardon the stupid introductory pun), I'd like to make a few observations:
I've done four trips on Randy's boat. In those four charters (12 dives total), I've dived with tigers, hammerheads, bulls, silkies, duskies, lemons, sandbars, nurses, and gray reef sharks. Some of the dives from Randy's boat are pure drift dives. Others begin as stationary dives on the sand, but then slowly drift to the surface, with the sharks circling around the divers. At no point did I perceive any of the sharks to be "mindless" creatures, as a previous poster suggested. On the contrary, I would definitely say that they were cautious, highly discriminating animals. I never once saw a shark on those dives lunge at bait, but in every case approach it very carefully. The experience of diving from the Emerald was extraordinarily revealing about the intelligence of sharks, on many fronts.
I've also done about 16 dives in NC wrecks that had sand tigers on them, sometimes 50-100 sharks within my field of view (especially on the Caribs wreck). Not a single one of those dives involved chum, or for that matter, a dive guide. It's just you, the wreck, the sharks, and the rest of the marine food pyramid that resides at the wreck. The sharks obviously behave differently when there is no chum, most noticeably in that they don't circle divers as they do on a baited dive. But they do come very close to you, and there are so many that you often get bumped just from the sheer number of animals in the water. I don't hear people criticize those dives as "altering" shark behavior. I can see a distinction from Randy's dives, but I'm not sure how meaningful the distinction is. A shipwreck in the middle of the ocean drawing marine life -- and predators -- to it is surely not independent of the hand of man. And we all know that the sand tigers are a big part of the draw to NC dives.
I've encountered tiger sharks on shore dives in Kona, at the entrance to the dive boat marina. The consensus seems to be that the tigers are attracted to the marina by fishing boats returning home and dumping overboard the fish guts they've been cleaning on the way back. So this is yet another kind of shark encounter experience, based on what could be described as incidental/unintentional chumming, leading to tigers being dependably found in a specific area. The tigers' reaction to divers seems to be to swim along at some distance, briefly check you out, and then move on. That was my experience as well. Again, the hand of man manifested in a different way.
Finally, I've done the shark dive in Roatan. I thought this was a different experience altogether. There is a chum bucket, and it gets placed near a wall, against which the divers stand or kneel. The gray reef sharks swim around the bucket for about 20 minutes. Then a dive master pulls the bucket open, and a 15-20 second shark tornado ensues, in which over dozen sharks compete for the contents of the 5-gallon bucket, by trying to frantically out-position or out-muscle each other (but as far as I could tell, not trying to bite each other). In those 15-20 seconds, there is frenzied behavior of the sort I have never seen anywhere else. But after that brief moment, the sharks realize that the bait is all gone, immediately seem to lose interest, and leave the area as if nothing had happened. It was an interesting experience but not something I'd especially want to repeat.
When I started diving, I thought that divers who did shark dives were thrill-seeking idiots. But over the years, as I've gotten more exposed to sharks and more interested in them, I tried Randy's boat and found it a remarkable experience, and I got very interested in sharks. I can understand that diving from the Emerald is not to everyone's taste. And I do think there is some inherent element of risk assumed, but this is true of diving itself.
I do think it's fair to ask whether baited dives would lead sharks to associate non-divers with food, and to draw large sharks to beaches. From what I've seen, sharks on baited dives invariably recognize with great precision whether there is bait, and which diver has it (if any). I don't see those sharks going off and and attacking beachgoers in some kind of blind rage at their not having bait. I am not aware of any evidence of that, and not for lack of interest in the subject.
Finally, I think it's very unkind to say that anyone who engages in shark feeding deserves to be bitten, as another poster stated. I don't know the circumstances of Randy's accident, but regardless, I don't think anyone who has ever dived with him would question that he loves sharks, and honestly believes that he is doing right by them. You may think that what he's doing may have unintended consequences -- fine, we could discuss that all day. But I think he also provides encounters with amazing animals, which I for one have come to really appreciate.
There, I've said my piece. Don't bite my head off.
