Proposed interactive shark diving in the Caymans

[HalcyonDaze]

In some ways, we don't. I think people tend to jump to thinking about feeding bears & alligators, desensitizing large predators to a human presence in a way believed to raise risks to people & the animals in question.

But not every terrestrial animal situation is viewed that way. Ever see a bird feeder? Hummingbird feeder? Squirrel feeder? What the road kill buffet we serve up all over our rural highways?

A great deal of wildlife feeding happens on land, so much so that some of it probably doesn't even occur to people as such, they've gotten so used to it.

Even there, impact needs to considered. I quit putting out bird seed regularly when the birds out back got to looking too fat, and I watched our dog grab & kill one I thought shouldn't have been such easy prey.

Oddly enough, in the 2nd link in post #29, consider this excerpt:



Why is feeding song birds peachy but giving a small reef shark a lion fish despicable? Maybe there's reason, but it's not as simple as 'because it's a wild animal.' So is the song bird...

Richard.

One thing that has struck me is that most of the time when a terrestrial animal becomes a nuisance due to feeding, where things go awry is when the source of that food is readily available - the animal can walk right up and get it at any time of day or night it pleases. I'm not too worried the "Lemon Ladies" will be wriggling up my street and nosing through the trash cans, and they don't follow us inshore.

As stated, I wonder if the movement patterns of a species have some effect on how susceptible it is to conditioning, reefies being relative homebodies. Another question might be what percentage of humans they see are snack dispensers - if the sharks are used to most encounters with divers being feeding interactions (especially if those interactions are conducted in the same time, in the same manner, and in the same location), will they be more likely to seek food from humans than sharks that encounter more non-feeding divers than feeding divers? Could it be possible that there's enough smarts in their little brains to figure out hey, not every one of these things is the candy man?

 

[scubadada]

...the less impact I have the better.

My philosophy also.

 

[Dave_lucas]

drrich2

I guess it depends on how someone is looking at it if they are just looking at it from the perspective of safety they see bears, wildcats and other predatory animals that can do harm to humans or our pets as a danger while other animals that are cute and present no danger it seems ok / good to give them food.

However if someone is looking at it from the perspective that by feeding a wild animal you are taking it further away from it's nature and messing with the balance of things they would feel that you should not feed any wild animal (This is how I view things). All I can say is that when we as humans intervene because we think we know better than nature it rarely has a good outcome.

I suppose this makes me a hypocrite since I am a diver and we are not naturally able to survive in that environment but I try to leave the place better than when I arrived and have as little impact as possible.

HalcyonDaze

Maybe they will evolve and grow legs and chase us on shore Kidding

The real question is not what impact feeding the sharks will have on us but what impact does it have on them and the ecosystem? Sharks that are not hunting naturally? Over population in a small area? disease? lack of migration? What about the impact on other species that the sharks are no longer hunting because they have an easy food source?

 

[drrich2]

Putting together some points made in this thread, it may not be practical to do the proposed shark dives well off-shore, an account of a non-feeding dive at a Bahamas site where Stuart Cove does feedings indicates intrusiveness by sharks well in excess of what many novice divers would tolerate (e.g.: large number in close quarters, with some nudging of divers), and the underwater topography is very different from eastern coastal Florida so that frame of reference is limited.

And Grand Cayman is a major tourist destination, with a lot of cruise ship divers & some land-based novice divers.

I'm not saying they should do this thing. If they do, I wonder how isolated the feed site would need to be, and where would anyone propose to do it?

And how much of it would there be? Grand Cayman is a major destination, and especially if they start offering it as a cruise ship excursion, that might legitimize it as 'safe' in the public mindset (if being swarmed by stingrays is peachy keen...), so just how many shark feedings how often would be happening over how small an area?

I don't have a major opinion on the issue either way but the logistics are interesting.

Richard.

P.S.: Is it at all common to see some of the larger, more dangerous sharks in the region? I'm just wondering, if deep water is closer to shore than in Florida, are unintended guests apt to show up for dinner?

 

[HalcyonDaze]

drrich2

I guess it depends on how someone is looking at it if they are just looking at it from the perspective of safety they see bears, wildcats and other predatory animals that can do harm to humans or our pets as a danger while other animals that are cute and present no danger it seems ok / good to give them food.

However if someone is looking at it from the perspective that by feeding a wild animal you are taking it further away from it's nature and messing with the balance of things they would feel that you should not feed any wild animal (This is how I view things). All I can say is that when we as humans intervene because we think we know better than nature it rarely has a good outcome.

I suppose this makes me a hypocrite since I am a diver and we are not naturally able to survive in that environment but I try to leave the place better than when I arrived and have as little impact as possible.

HalcyonDaze

Maybe they will evolve and grow legs and chase us on shore Kidding

The real question is not what impact feeding the sharks will have on us but what impact does it have on them and the ecosystem? Sharks that are not hunting naturally? Over population in a small area? disease? lack of migration? What about the impact on other species that the sharks are no longer hunting because they have an easy food source?

In a sense, we've been "feeding" sharks and in some ways altering their behavior for centuries. Back in the Age of Sail pelagic species used to follow ships to feed off dumped garbage and the occasional deceased or washed-overboard sailor. When commercial whaling started they would help themselves to the carcasses. Whaling stations onshore usually had quite the attendance of sharks in the area. They can learn to exploit certain feeding opportunities, but in general these are animals that quite literally don't know where their next meal is coming from. They're not going to forget how to hunt on their own and for the more mobile species at least it seems like even year-round feedings won't override their normal movement patterns. They take advantage of whatever options come their way.

That said, concern is warranted. Stingray City is just about the most clear-cut example I've ever read about in the scientific literature of human interaction altering elasmobranch behavior; with that said the level of human interaction is likely far more extreme than any shark feed operation.

Feeding ops for me are a trade-off; I'd like to see sharks just on their own but with the less common species that's a rare occurrence. Even with bait some are skittish.

 

[scubadada]

Is there any follow-up on the proposed shark feeding by Ocean Frontiers?