My Dive buddy is afraid of getting eaten by a Shark.

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This thread pertains to recreational divers primarily diving in Florida and the Caribbean, and their most likely shark encounters (if any) will be with gentle Nurse Sharks and minding-their-own business Caribbean Reef Sharks.

To be fair, the thread was started as a general "fear of being eaten by sharks" discussion. There was no specific region or species of shark specified. It's a disservice to the discussion to claim that shark attacks never happen. It's more useful to determine how rarely they occur and under what circumstances.
 
May be swimming with whaleshark is a good start to ease his fear of shark. I did this 2 weeks ago in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. It's only 2-hour flight from Houston to Cancun and take 20-minute ferry from Puerto Juarez to Isla Mujeres and 90-minute boat ride to the sites. There are tons of them there from July to September to filter up the snapper eggs. They eat about 200-300 lbs of those eggs / day. When I swam with them, I found those eggs in my hairs, wetsuit, everywhere.


@Ken Kurtis gave me drone pictures of their congregation, below. Those white specs in the pictures are the boats. So they are as big as the boats.

whaleshark1.jpg

whaleshark2.jpg
 
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They only allow you to snorkel there. If you want to dive with them, then you need to go to Cendrawasih Bay, Papua, Indonesia. I was there couple years ago. You'll see several of them just hanging vertically in the water, below fisherman platform, sucking the net full of anchovies. Check out this video:

 
To be fair, the thread was started as a general "fear of being eaten by sharks" discussion. There was no specific region or species of shark specified. It's a disservice to the discussion to claim that shark attacks never happen. It's more useful to determine how rarely they occur and under what circumstances.

The OP specifically stated "...We live in Southwest FL and will primarily being diving the Keys and probably the Caribbean..." so a specific region was given; and I never said "that shark attacks never happen."

And it was not a "general 'fear of being eaten by sharks' discussion" it was specifically about the OP's Buddy and his fear of sharks and how to help him to deal with it.
 
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Magnificent creatures. I believe what we call Grey Nurse sharks are called snaggle tooth sharks in Florida. Almost mersmerising underwater. Apologies for the quality of the video ... it was taken with a Sony Cybershot 204 version.

The key for me was knowledge. Know what is is in area and what their habits are. If he is nervous try to make sure nobody is spear fishing close by.

Sharks have two major differences in my book. Sharp lightly inward curving pointy teeth that eat prey whole. Those would be Grey Nurse or Snaggletooth etc. Ain't no shark (of that type) gonna look at me with a tank on my back and think.. "Lunch... I can get my mouth around that!" Sharks with triangular shaped teeth with serrated edges that bite chunks off , rip, tear and eat them Those would be the Great Whites. I Still don't look much like lunch to them and they aren't likely to think otherwise unless I am near some type of fish blood (spear fishing) seals etc. I avoid those activities where GWS are common.

IMHO knowledge is always good. Know the area, the types of sharks, their feeding habits and number of SCUBA divers attacked in the area but also what they were doing when attacked. Avoid that type of activity and you should be right.
 
Things we have learnt in Western Australia -time of year and water temp below 17c is a common factor in the recent years "incidents". Time of day (dawn, late afternoon/sunset) and weather conditions play a part.

So, if the water temp is under 17 like now and the day is overcast I can either wait out the week because there's no sunshine forecast for a week, or drive down south where it's even colder but there's blue sky forecast on Wednesday so I should be fine, or drive 1700km to Ningaloo where we have whalesharks too and the waters too warm for whites and tigers. I'm personally more bothered by tigers due to my dads buddy being a fatal in the 60s and I've only ever seen one GWS while diving here - a juvenile but still impressive. It did absolutely zero, just cruised past doing whatever it is GWS do between meals.

I have another theory - being bitten by sharks is a heriditary condition that skips a generation - father and nephew have been bitten by wobbegong and black tip reefie baby respectively. There is most likely zero evidence to support this theory.

There is some truth in that saying it's the ones you don't see ....
 

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