scared now!

[gkndivebum]

A friend of mine is a graduate student at UH and is involved in a project doing home range
tracking on tiger sharks. He maintains a set of passive receivers up and down the Kona
coast, and has several radio-tagged tigers. There are several that hang out in the
vicinity of Honokohau Harbor, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering
the habit of the local fishermen to dump bits and pieces of marlin etc overboard before
heading into the harbor. They also hang out up around Puako and just north of the Four
Seasons / Kona Village area.

That said, I only know of four divers who have seen a tiger under water while on
scuba. They describe the experience as "exciting".

The tagging process involves fishing for them using marlin hooks, bringing them along side
a Boston Whaler (yes), flipping them upside down by hand, and performing minor surgery
to install the radio tag. Some would call my friend psychotic.

I guess the point is that tigers are around, though we don't often get the chance to
interact with them. This may be a Good Thing(tm), as they are pretty opportunistic
and indiscriminate feeders.

 

[deputydan1]

thanks, guys....i really learn a lot here!

is it true that most shark attacks happen near the surface? makes sense to me...

is there an actual NUMBER of the amount of scuba divers killed in shark attacks??

thanks,

aloha,

-dan

 

[Wildcard]

A friend of mine is a graduate student at UH and is involved in a project doing home range
tracking on tiger sharks. He maintains a set of passive receivers up and down the Kona
coast, and has several radio-tagged tigers. There are several that hang out in the
vicinity of Honokohau Harbor, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering
the habit of the local fishermen to dump bits and pieces of marlin etc overboard before
heading into the harbor. They also hang out up around Puako and just north of the Four
Seasons / Kona Village area.

That said, I only know of four divers who have seen a tiger under water while on
scuba. They describe the experience as "exciting".

The tagging process involves fishing for them using marlin hooks, bringing them along side
a Boston Whaler (yes), flipping them upside down by hand, and performing minor surgery
to install the radio tag. Some would call my friend psychotic.

I guess the point is that tigers are around, though we don't often get the chance to
interact with them. This may be a Good Thing(tm), as they are pretty opportunistic
and indiscriminate feeders.

Great, two of my favorite spots....Love to see another with my camera this time.

 

[drbill]

LeFlaneur- so, is the Discovery Channel in cahoots with the current administration (and earlier ones as well) in promoting fear in its viewers as a means of control (per "Bowling for Columbine")? Or is it in concert with certain religions that promote the concept of man having dominion over nature? Oops, I've raised the issues of politics AND religion... will I be banished? I'm just teasing!

I have found a market for realistic portrayals of nature, both in my writings and in my local cable TV program. Of course I use a lot of humor in both, and that seems to help "sell" what I produce.

I must admit to a fear of tigers based on an encounter (posted elsewhere) with a 22' tiger while kayaking in the Sea of Cortez 30+ years ago. However all my shark encounters on SCUBA have been positive.

Doc

 

[justleesa]

is there an actual NUMBER of the amount of scuba divers killed in shark attacks??

0 Scuba fatalities in Hawaii, now surfers and surface swimmers thats an entirely different story.

I did a little hunt and found this old post on a Hawaiian board.
http://www.destinations2go.com/wwwboard/past010.htm

Shark attack
Island Guy
Shark attacks make for sensationalist media and generate significantly more hysteria than, say, getting stung by a black widow spider or falling off a ladder-- both of which occur with vastly more frequency and cause far more deaths annually. The recent fatalities on the U.S. East Coast occurred predictably when people ignored public warnings and, in two cases, actually went surfing in waters where sharks were visible at the time. Getting biten by a shark in shark-infested waters, knowing in advance that the waters are shark-infested, is somewhat akin to entering a burning building wearing a paper suit.

Now for the facts: Worldwide, in the year 2000, there were 79 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks, including 10 fatalities, compared with 58 attacks in 1999. More than two thirds occurred in North American waters; just 2 occurred in the state of Hawaii and none on the Big Island. The last shark attack on Hawaii Island occurred October 7, 1999, in the waters off Old Kona Airport State Park. The victim, a teenager, was attacked by a tiger shark while surfing at dusk. In July, 1999, a 43-year-old man was attacked while surfing near Hilo. Before then, the last attack took place in 1972, when a spearfisherman was biten on the arm by Waimanu Valley. In 1963, a man was biten on the leg while surfing off South Kona. Despite more than 100 known shark attacks in Hawaii's waters since 1900, the Big Island has not had a single fatality caused by a shark since such records have been kept.

According to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), the "number of shark-human interactions transpiring in a given year is directly correlated to the amount of human time spent in the sea. As the world population continues to upsurge and the time spent in aquatic recreation greatly rises, we might expect an annual increase in the number of attacks. By contrast, nearshore shark populations are declining at a serious rate in many areas of the world as a result of overfishing, theoretically reducing the opportunity for these shark-human interactions. However, year-to-year variability in local economic, meteorological and oceanographic conditions also significantly influences the odds of sharks and humans encountering one another. As a result, short-term trends in the number of shark attacks must be viewed with caution."

In other words, more people are getting attacked by sharks, because there are more people getting in the water. As a wise old diving instructor remarked, "every time you enter the ocean, you become part of the food chain." This is advice worth remembering whether you're diving, bodyboarding, surfing, swimming, kayaking, or just squatting in the surf to take a pee (especially then, some might say).

There is also conclusive evidence linking rising water temperatures from global warming with the increasing prevalance of sharks near the shore. Some shark species frequent warmer waters where their preferred prey is most likely to be found.

As a diver, I've been fortunate to encounter numerous sharks, including some rare and exotic species, without incident. The only time I felt seriously threatened happened when I inadvertently jumped on a sleeping blacktip reef shark entering the water from a liveaboard on a nightdive. I'm not an expert on shark behavior, but I recall reading that when a shark is about to feed, it arches its back. Which is what the blacktip was doing when I shined my divelight in its eyes. Never before has a diver in full gear swum backward so furiously in black water, with such a mad flailing of oversize "power" fins. Fortunately for me, the coral head where the shark was hanging out was its nighttime abode and, with me out of the picture, he was content to let bygones be bygones. So was I.

BTW, The guy that died early this year on Kauai was a surfer, he went out in murky water ( wouldn't want to dive in that kind of water anyway). Bethany is a surfer.....

 

[seabat]

deputydan,

"is it true that most shark attacks happen near the surface? makes sense to me..."

"is there an actual NUMBER of the amount of scuba divers killed in shark attacks??"

You might want to take a look at these two websites

http://www.scubaradio.com/gsaf/gsaf2003.cfm

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/isaf/isaf.htm

Some quick notes from each.

Scubaradio.
2003 - 61 attacks listed, 2 listed as diving or about 3%, compared to 2% listed for attacks in an aquarium. (ISAF listed 55 "unprovoked" attacks for 2003)

2002 - 60 attacks listed, 2 listed as diving of which one is in an aquarium.

ISAF
1900 to 1990, 1,403 "unprovoked" attacks counted, 187 listed as diving or about 13%.

Both sites list around 80% of the attacks happening to people on the surface. Both sites list fatalities in their statistics.

At ISAF you might want to look at the page that describes how many people in New York City have been bitten by squirrels. That really does not have much relevance but I hope you are transitioning from "scared" to "aware".

 

[Wildcard]

There was a surfer killed in Maui just a few months ago, very close to where I had my shark checking us out. I think they said it was the first in 12 years.

 

[MarcHerm]

My instructor saw a Tiger shark while diving @ Oahu... He was not that excited about it because of their more aggressive nature but nothing happend...

 

[LioKai]

For the record:
When there are shark sightings outside of Honokohau Harbor here in Kona, that is my cue to go diving. My wife, Kendra, and I have been on the search to photograph and video Laverne (we nick-named one female tiger "Laverne" last year). The most incredible video that I have shot is not of the shark, it is of a juvenile Eagle Ray (named Ray Ray). I didn't see Laverne for the first 20 minutes of the dive but I know she was there because Ray Ray was hidding UNDERNEATH of me. You can see my fins in part of the video that I shot of Ray Ray because he was so close. Kendra was 30 feet behind me with Laverne in full view. When we surfaced she told me what she saw was Laverne and Ray Ray playing "ring around the diver".

We have also sat at the fish scales at Honokohau Harbor with my pole cam watching tigers swim into and out of the harbor channel. They would take a 15 minute swim, in on the north side and out on the south side of the channel every hour and a half. We watched a small fishing boat enter the harbor dragging a dead marlin behind their boat. Minutes later, right on the hour and a half schedule for the tour of the harbor, comes a female tiger. She never changed her course, ignoring the dead and bleeding marlin in the water being dragged to the fish scales. 15 minutes later, exactly on schedule, the tiger returned on the south side of the harbor channel, as expected by the habits of the day she went under the fish scales, ignoring the marlin which was still floating in the water.

If only I had all of the cameras that I needed set up to capture all of this on film. Unfortunately, the only video that I got out of all of this was a swim-by of the tiger with turtles and eagle rays casually lounging in the back ground.

Last note, Discovery Channel needs to show something other than hunting and killing on shark week. I would love to see video of courting and mating behaviors of sharks.

I'll talk to you all in a few weeks. My plane leaves in a few hours for Galapagos. It's a rough life, but someone needs to live it, might as well be me.

Matthew J D'Avella
Kona Hawaii

 

[Seabear70]

I work for Discovery Channel. I'm working there right now. One word: Hype.

Hype

Hype

Sharks NOT biting people doesn't sell. Don't worry. It is a side of my job that I hate.

Incidentally, I'm working with some independents to produce a "myth busting" show about sharks that tells it like it is. But will the network want it? You tell me.

What might sell, though I do not know how to go about this, would be an IMAX film along those lines. There are a few IMAX theaters in Aquariums and such that might love it.

But your are right, Sharkbites and Vampire attacks are both pretty rare, but they're both among the most spectacular ways to die. Fortunately, both are almost mythical, in that you are more likely to die in your kitchen from accidentally stuffing your hand down a garbage disposal then you are to die from either one.