How many people a year die while ....

[wreckchick]

I can state as an unequivocal fact that there are bull sharks in the Florida keys that are conditioned to the sound of a banded speargun being fired. They will show up whether you hit the fish or not.

It doesn't take much to change natural behavior.

R

 

[ArcticDiver]

yeah but we kind of are conditioning the sharks by "chumming" the water near fishing piers and slicks created by fishing and shrimping boats. There just aren't always divers present. And aren't sharks in feeding mode (possibly) when they mistakenly bite people wading in the surf in Destin, FL or surfing in HI? Just a theory.

You write as if sharks were automatons without any ability to think or to make decisions. From what we know that is just not the case. We are not "conditioning" sharks. They are just doing what they do. We are just providing additional food for them while they do their thing.

If any animal is being "conditioned" it is the humans animals. Even that is a stretch.

What is being done is feed a predator. Then a second predator, human, jumps in the middle of the meal. But, in this role the human isn't the most dangerous and ends up getting hurt. Gee, couldn't see that coming now could we?(sarcasm).

Given all the wanton destruction of sharks by humans the least we can do is give a few of them a meal once in awhile. If a human goes for high drama and gets hurt in the process, it was the human's choice.

 

[Gary D.]

There is a behavior much more risky than the shark feeding and a lot of people do it without ever having a second thought about it. It can be affordable or extremely expensive. It can be done alone or with a group. Your actions can be altered by others in the area as well as yours being altered by others. Some are safe and play by the rules. Others throw out the rule book and engage in extremely risky behavior endangering themselves and everyone around them. Communicating is frequently done with hand signals that can be misread as there is little or no training in their proper use.

There is no waver that needs to be signed warning one of the dangers and risks involved. In most cases there is a very limited amount of training that is required to get a certification to participate in this activity then you’re released on your own. Most of the time people are allowed to participate at a very young age.

Most people could care less about maintaining the equipment so it is safe for them and the others around them. They could care less about what their air pressure is, the condition of their hoses, the general wear and tear on the equipment or even keeping it clean.


Now we hear the news make sensational stories out of shark bites, plane crashes, sinking cruise boats and collapsing buildings to just mention a few. Sure they are tragic and news worthy but we do something much more dangerous on a daily basis.

You should have figured it out by now but about the most dangerous activity we can participate in is driving or ridding in or on a motor vehicle. More people die or are severely injured than in almost every other activity combined. But it doesn’t get anything more than a couple of minutes on the local news.

Diving can be a dangerous activity. But no where near as dangerous as the trip to and from the air port or a dive site.

I’m not saying its right or wrong to have these shark feeding trips but I’m with others who don’t like them. But every time this happens the sharks are the ones who get the raw end of the deal. Try walking into a neighbor’s secured kennel that has a vicious dog in it and get mauled. Who gets the bad rap? Not the person who trespassed and entered the kennel but the poor dog that was contained within it. It’s just not fair to the creature.

I would like to see some actual stats on just how many people have been there done that and how many actual injuries or deaths there have been from a “shark bite” and not poor or improper care after the bite. I’m thinking that very few actually die from the bite itself.

Done ranting.

Gary D.

 

[deco_martini]

I'm not sure how many people die every year from going so deep on normal air that they get the wah wahs, but we still have safety guidelines about going that deep.

There are specialist divers that do these dives, but we don't make a weekly charter for normal recreational divers to go dive them and misportray them as something normal.

 

[grassyknoll]

You should have figured it out by now but about the most dangerous activity we can participate in is driving or ridding in or on a motor vehicle. More people die or are severely injured than in almost every other activity combined. But it doesn’t get anything more than a couple of minutes on the local news.

Gary, not arguing with you here but someone is going to point out that comapring diving and driving isn't necesariliy the best activity to use to make your analogy, since most states DO see the danger and force the participants (of driving) to carry liability insurance. A better one may be unprotected sex

 

[irishsquid]

My only issue with the situation was what (if any) impact there may be from imparting a learned behavior or conditioning on an apex predator. A lot of the vitriolic e-mails were really missing the point that divers aren't the only ones interacting with these sharks (and even if we were, some non-shark divers don't seem to like the thought of conditioning sharks to become accustomed to ALL divers). Let's just play what if. What if I wanted to start an above water shark experience for my boat passengers; and the way I planned to do this was to take 7 mil wetsuits and stuff them full of chum to attract sharks for my boat passengers to take photos of. Suddenly, I believe a lot of divers and surfers might not be really cool with the thought that sharks may be conditioned to associate a wetsuit shaped like a diver with food. Now, I admit, this is a little more extreme than what Abernathy is doing, but these sharks do not belong to divers and we do share the ocean with many users so we ought to be damn sure we tread as lightly as possible. I am not saying that the level of conditioning the sharks were receiving rises to any dangerous level or that what Abernathy was/is doing is wrong, all I am saying I don't think anyone really knows what effect this really has. But boy, a few SBers were willing to bet their first born that there was absolutely NO effect.

And as for the pursuit of risky behavior? I have engaged in plenty, but let’s not kid ourselves. When any of us engages in risky behavior we aren't merely risking ourselves-that's a selfish assumption. There are plenty of others potentially affected-the helicopter crew or SAR team that is looking for you or evacuating you could easily come to harm as well as any other rescuers involved. Your actions could result in injuries that focus medical resources away from others who may need it (I wonder who was bumped at the ER by the shark-bitten-diver, I doubt that the trauma team was simply waiting around for something to do). Again, we don't live our lives in a vacuum. A lot has changed since the days when an adventurer was truly only risking his/her life. With EPIRBs, MOB, cell phones, Sat phones and the internet, in this day and age, if you get in trouble, someone is likely coming for you and potentially risking their life as well. Have fun, take risks, just make sure the show is worth the price of admission.

Just my .02

I can agree with MOST of the above except: Your actions could result in injuries that focus medical resources away from others who may need it (I wonder who was bumped at the ER by the shark-bitten-diver, I doubt that the trauma team was simply waiting around for something to do). You are correct that actions have more implications than just to the dare devil/risk taker, however; the others who may need medical resources aren't necessarily more deserving. The ER's probably don't care if the victim was a drunk driver, speeding motorcyclist w/o a helmet, someone trying to beat the train, a heart attack victim due to a lifetime of overeating, smoker, or drug induced suicide attempt. Which is the waste of resources? All humans make bad choices/decisions occasionally, some are downright STUPID. We are lucky that there are others who chose to pursue a path that enables them to assist and try to help those making bad choices. It's what they do.

 

[Gary D.]

I wasn’t comparing diving to driving but pointing out a dangerous activity that people just take for granted or they have the “it isn’t going to happen to me” attitude.

I live in one of those states that have strict penalties for not having vehicle insurance. In fact the third violation can result in an extended vacation at the Steel Bar Hotel but it still isn’t a much of a deterrent. Sure the states recognize the dangers but it seems the motoring public doesn’t.

These are the latest stats I could find and they are a couple of years old. 18.6% of motorist in Idaho are uninsured. That works out to Idaho being #17 out of the 50 states. I don’t know who the 16 are above us but those stats suck.

Remember when diving was dangerous and sex was safe.

Gary D.

 

[grassyknoll]

What I find most amazing about this and the other threads currently running about the Shark Involved Mishap is this. Both of these threads have blown up for one simple reason and it has almost nothing to do with personal responsibility, behavioral conditioning etc...
No, the reason these threads have legs is that as divers all SBers have such a deep love of the ocean they we all feel compelled to engage in trying to rationalize what happened. Everyone is on the same wavelength, varying points along that wavelength, but the same wavelength none the less.

 

[raymond phule]

You should have figured it out by now but about the most dangerous activity we can participate in is driving or ridding in or on a motor vehicle.

Are you really saying that the most dangerous is driving? I would definitely say that high mountain mountainering is far more dangerous to take one example.

More people die or are severely injured than in almost every other activity combined. But it doesn’t get anything more than a couple of minutes on the local news.

And more people drive compared to the numbers of participants in all other activities combined.

You need to take into account the number of participants and their activity level to get anything close to a fair comparison.

Diving can be a dangerous activity. But no where near as dangerous as the trip to and from the air port or a dive site.

And you base this on?

Some numbers 14.9 fatalities per 100,000 persons in driving. Road Crash Fatality Rates for all American States and Thirty Countries, 2003

around 100 scuba deaths in the US per year I belive.

The numbers of active in the US is not known How Many Divers Are There? - Undercurrent, May 2007

They estimated 1.2 millions.

1.2 millions gives a fatality rate of 8.3 per 100 000 participants. Less than driving but not a huge difference. We could of course get other numbers depending on the numbers of active divers. Lets assume an extremely high number 3 millions instead. Then we get 3.33 instead.

Ok, how large part of the average american divers driving it to and from diving compared to other driving? My quess is that a factor larger of 10 is very likely (i believe the number is much higher for the average diver) and this number also depends on the number of participants because the average numbers of dives done if we count many people as divers is going to be lower compared to if we only count the hard core divers as active divers.

So assume 1/10 of the driving is done to and from diving and we come up with a fatality rate for driving to and from diving as 1.49. This is half of the lowest estimate of the fatality risk in diving.

We can ofcourse change numbers (for example a 100 death per year might be 80 deaths per year) but I definitely dont see the possibility that the result is going to be "But no where near as dangerous as the trip to and from the air port or a dive site."

 

[MikeFerrara]

I don't care who wants to get themselves eaten by a shark but I think there are some reasonable questions that need to be answered concerning these feeding dives. First does it condition the sharks in such a way as to pose a hazard to others who use the waters? Second, is it good for the sharks and the rest of the environment?

Go into any national park and note the "Do not feed the bear" signs. Do the same concerns apply to sharks?