Shark attack, Egypt, Brothers islands

[InTheDrink]

I suspect the only thing more hidden is how many really have been feeding the sharks

I doubt there’s been an increase in that but obviously I can’t be sure. It tends to be a fairly big no no and other boats will take photos/videos when they see transgressions and report. It does happen intentionally and unintentionally. I suspect the unintentionally part has been a factor here. Plus so many boats which is bound to create curiosity but not normally incidents.

I’m confident we’ll get to the bottom of this and things will return to normal.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Link to video of bcd incident. You can see a few things.

John Clynes

1. Always maintain eye contact
2. Always stay calm - this diver lost buoyancy at a fairly shallow depth but decided not to ditch his 6kg weight belt which was a good decision.
3. His new-ish buddy had been practicing SMB deployment. He deployed it. Shark went after it and gave them the chance to get on the ladder.

All in all a good outcome. But it reinforces that you need to keep eye contact at all times absolutely watch your 6.

My main thought was "he turned his back on a predator and folks are surprised it attacked?" Points given for not having a complete freak-out though.

Given that what I'm seeing in a lot of these videos is people kicking away from a shark, I think that needs to be addressed too. To a shark, an animal squaring off against them is going to face them head-on, where it has the best capability to visually track the shark and defend itself. Turning the head away and presenting the tail (or legs in this case) is pointing your most vulnerable area towards the shark.

 

[InTheDrink]

My main thought was "he turned his back on a predator and folks are surprised it attacked?" Points given for not having a complete freak-out though.

Given that what I'm seeing in a lot of these videos is people kicking away from a shark, I think that needs to be addressed too. To a shark, an animal squaring off against them is going to face them head-on, where it has the best capability to visually track the shark and defend itself. Turning the head away and presenting the tail (or legs in this case) is pointing your most vulnerable area towards the shark.

Yep you’re right. Eye contact at all time. Sometimes this isn’t possible e.g. if you have 5 Oceanics coming from different directions. That is problematic.

However the key thing remains why they started getting bitey when they didn’t before (for divers at least).

I’m not ashamed to say that one time I just closed my eyes when I knew a longi was passing over my head from the back. But they weren’t tasting things back then.

Ten years of diving with them. Something has changed and it’s not divers. We’ll get it sorted but obviously as much info we can get as possible the better.

Thanks

 

[60plus]

Wild animals bite - simple as that. I have spent quite a bit of time on farms and most of them have sheepdogs. Sheep dogs are trained to nip the back legs of cattle to make them move. If you turn your back on a sheep dog you are far more likely to be bitten than if you stand your ground and face it. Another thing in the video is the separation of the divers, not good buddy skills. If they were close together I would have thought it more likely to put off a predator. In my OW I was taught that if a shark or other predator shows interest move slowly away keeping close to the bottom whilst watching it. I have never dived with large shark about so I do not know how it would be to face one that looked irritated. I have been in with shoals hundreds of barracuda, some of them fully grown. My quide had both of us sit on the sandy bottom with our backs against rocks, sit still and watch them pass.

 

[Satrekker]

Does Aggressor take similar precautions?

None that I noticed when I was there August 2017 - Okeanos II.

 

[Satrekker]

Whoa! You saw a Tiger shark!

I think the Cocos’ Tiger sharks wiped out the turtle population there. I saw no Tiger sharks nor turtles there back in September. Once their main staple diet were gone, they just moved on to elsewhere I guess.

I had a handful of tiger shark sightings when I was diving Cocos in August 2017. The largest of which was a 16' pregnant female who swam by me within 20' as I was camped among the rocks around 115'. She was spectacular. IIRC, I saw 4 more tiger sharks during that week, and interestingly enough, I saw a couple of sea turtles, which had been gone for years from what I was told. Tiger sharks are definitely making a comeback at Cocos.

I will say that at no time was I fearful around the sharks. It was amazing, and if sharks are your thing, it's hard to imagine a better place to dive. Speedy recovery to the injured diver. Stay safe everyone.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I had a handful of tiger shark sightings when I was diving Cocos in August 2017. The largest of which was a 16' pregnant female who swam by me within 20' as I was camped among the rocks around 115'. She was spectacular. IIRC, I saw 4 more tiger sharks during that week, and interestingly enough, I saw a couple of sea turtles, which had been gone for years from what I was told. Tiger sharks are definitely making a comeback at Cocos.

I will say that at no time was I fearful around the sharks. It was amazing, and if sharks are your thing, it's hard to imagine a better place to dive. Speedy recovery to the injured diver. Stay safe everyone.

The two recent incidents I'm aware of from Cocos, based on conversations I had with people who had knowledge of them, involved divers that had broken off from the main group. A friend of mine on a filming expedition there before that had tried it as an experiment and noticed that not long after he split off he had a tiger take a close interest in him.

 

[scubadada]

So....now that it is near the end of December, what are they going to do regarding the closure of Brothers?

I assume night dives are still prohibited at Cocos, is that correct? Do all the operators now carry some kind of Tiger Shark deterrent stick?

 

[scubadada]

What is the status of the closure of Brothers?

 

[InTheDrink]

I see it differently. That shark was testing the risk/reward. Certainly hungry. It's a big ocean, it could leave whenever it wanted to. Those divers did not display any sort of alpha dominance and the shark figured it out, got to the divers vulnerable spot, and went for the first debilitating bite. I assume the divers got out of the water quickly, but had they not, that shark would have ate him eventually.

One thing I've learned diving with sharks is you keep your eyes on them, your body facing and swimming toward them and when a white, oceanic, big mako, big tiger or any apex species shows up in a pack and doesn't leave, they are interested in you and it's time to get out of the water.

Indeed I got out of the water after 25 mins with one juvenile male because it was going loco.

I’ve dived in the exact same location with up to 5 or 6 of them at the same time and whilst not ideal I was happy to guide with them around and close and 70-80 minute dives and couldn’t get enough. This is over a nearly 10 year period. This is the only year I ever got out early.

Divers of all (read: too little) abilities have been diving around these sharks for years with Zero attacks despite a lot of divers doing pretty much everything wrong.

So it’s not a change in diver behaviour. There are plenty that should get bitten and don’t.

This year was just plain different in terms of the behaviour of the sharks. They were super excited *some* of the time.

I’ll wait for the real experts to feed back but this wasn’t a diver behaviour issue (altho much improvement to be had there). I don’t believe it was a guide issue either altho again improvements can be made.

Something else was at play.

I have my theories but others that have more experience in these matters will pronounce in due course.

I hope they get it sorted. It’s such an amazing spot to dive and the sharks are amazing but humans need to correct whatever we are doing wrong to make a relatively safe activity somewhat more risky even if the risks are still very low.