Shark attack stories

[vladimir]

Wow Bret, amazing story.

 

[vladimir]

Just want to bump this thread for those who may have missed it. In addition to Thal's excellent story, Bret's is the best of the million or so posts here on Scubaboard.

 

[james croft]

Man, Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the water...

 

[Fyshebait]

Man, Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the water...

It IS safe to go back in the water. Maybe instead of just shark attack stories, we should share all the stories of encounters with sharks that WEREN'T attacks, but just great experiences. I'm guessing they would outnumber the attack stories by an order of magnitude, and hopefully it wouldn't offend the original poster of the thread?

My own experience with sharks has been admittedly limited, mostly nurse sharks, but I did have the opportunity to encounter a large bull shark in Cuba a couple of years ago. It was an experience I'll never forget...one of the resort divemasters, Pablo (who I had been diving with all week), asked if I wanted to see some sharks, which of course I did. Some friends of his were spearfishing, and there had been a group of bulls hanging out in the area. We rented a van and drove 3.5 hours to the harbor they were spotted to meet up with his friends. It was very cool, we just hopped off the wharf into the water, and gathered at a concrete ledge about 15' deep. Then over the ledge, and down a slope. There was a huge shipwreck lying on the slope, and we just followed it down to the end, about 125' deep. The bulls appeared almost immediately, but most of them stayed distant, barely visible (and the vis was pretty poor for the Caribbean), and I can't really say how many there were. One, though, came in very close, within 10 feet. She just cruised past calmly. Pablo looked at me, I nodded, and off we went. We followed her for a couple of minutes, with her swimming in a lazy zig zag, until she turned and went out to deeper water. Pablo and I returned to the wreck, and ascended, taking our safety stop at the top of the wreck. Pablo told me after that he thought the shark was a pregnant female from the size. She was likely only about 8 feet long, but she was very thick, and looked as big as a car in the water.

So that's my story; nothing dramatic or exciting, definitely a giant step down from some of the ones posted here, but it was an amazing experience. My favorite part of it is that we weren't on a staged shark-feeding expedition (not that I'd pass up a chance to do one of those either) but that this was just going where the sharks were and seeing them doing what they do, although I'm sure the frequent spearfishing in the area didn't hurt our chances of them being there. And aside from the shark, it was a great dive, with plenty of other great fish to see, a big green moray near the base of the wreck, and of course the wreck itself.

I did have a cheap point-and-shoot camera with me, and managed to get a picture of the shark as she swam past; not great quality, but it's one of my favorite diving pictures, just because of what it is. (The actual picture looks better than this image...I just scanned the original) The whole thing only makes me hungry for more shark encounters.

One final note on the other stories here. When I read the Marco Flagg story, I had to chuckle at his closing comments. He says: "Unfortunately, attacks by sharks on humans along the California coast are so rare that a big database of incidents from which to draw conclusions does simply not exist." Not sure who aside from him would find this unfortunate! But it brings my post full circle: enjoy your diving, it really is safe to go into the water.

 

[johnny_bravo]

Incredible stories by Thal and BG.

Cheers.

-J.-

 

[drbill]

I've dived with a wide range of different species of sharks throughout the world (not to mention the great whites that stay just outside my range of vision when I dive here at home), but I've only "suffered" one shark "attack" in 38 years of salt water diving (everything was freshwater before 1969).

I was filming an 18" horn shark in our dive park and decided I needed to reposition it for a better camera angle. The shark immediately became agitated and swam up to my chest, attempting to bite me several times as my regulator fell from my mouth due to extreme laughter! Of course being a horn shark, its teeth didn't even tear the 7mm wetsuit, and I recovered my reg as it swam off indignantly.

 

[EnronX]

This is probably the 5th time I've read this thread, and each time I read BG and Thal's stories I get something new out of them...just an amazing read.

Doe anyone know if there ever was any additional research or analysis done on the attack in St. Croix?

The white-tip was what Jacques Cousteau always referred to as the ocean's most dangerous shark, but I had no idea they grew to 12+ feet....If I'm not mistaken it was white-tips that were the main shark that killed so many naval servicemen in the USS Indianapolis sinking (made famous by that scene in Jaws of course)

YouTube - JAWS - U.S.S. Indianapolis Speech

 

[Antarctic-Adventurer]

I was working for US AID on an Inter-American Bank project during 1874 and 75. We were assessing the fisheries resources in Lago de Nicaragua. Most of the work was stock assessment stuff, e.g., tag and recapture studies and such.

I’d heard stories about the Bull Sharks in the lake and I had some concerns so I usually dove with a shark billy and also had a Farallon Shark Dart (Magnum model) that my mother had sent me off with that I promised her I'd carry. It was mounted in a PVC tube on the right side of my backpack.

The Farallon Shark Dart is a sharpened hollow spike with CO₂ cylinder. If you poke the spike into a shark, a metal disk drives a pin into the cylinder, punctures it, and the gas travels out the hollow spike and into the shark. Sharks lak any fascia to hold their internal organs in place so the gas inflates the shark like a balloon, pushing it's interal orgams out it's mouth and forcing the shark to the surface.

This picture is of the small version, the one I had used the giant CO₂ cartridges, a two foot pole and no sheath.

Anyway, to make a long story short, whilst diving to do some transect work I had a Bull Shark start to circle me and displaying aggressively (back arched, pectorals down, etc.). The circles got smaller and smaller and finally he was in real tight and I was holding the shark’s head away from me with the billy. We were spinning from right to left. The shark flicked away from me and cut my leg rather badly with what I can only assume was his pectoral fin. He went out about fifteen feet and turned back at me, I reached over my shoulder and pulled the Shark Dart (with a shaft about two feet long attached) up out of the tube and over my shoulder. I glanced about for my buddy, but he was no where to be found.

The shark came straight at me and I fended him off with the bily, I brought the dart around and stabbed him with it. Nothing happened. I pulled the dart out of him, still with the billy pushing against his head. I could see that I’d not pulled the little orange clip off the dart to arm it.

It was one of the moments like when Butch and Sundance jump off the cliff, OH ...! I was pretty scared, I could not arm the damned thing without using my left hand (which was holding the shark off) or my teeth (which were holding my regulator). After what seemed like a long time spinning around with the billie held against the shark’s head (likely it was really five to ten seconds, but time is hard to judge in adrenal drenched retrospect) the shark once again retreated and went back into aggressive displaying I dropped the billiy on its lanyard, reached up and pulled the clip off and recovered the billy as quickly as I could.

The shark charged once again, and once again I parried his head with the billy, as we started to turn I poked him hard with the dart and this time it went off with a woosh. I could see his guts being forced out his mouth and he went head up. I had a little trouble pulling the dart out due to the angle.

I checked my compass and headed back toward shore which was a few hundred yards away, after going a little way I decided to surface and look for Buddy. He was a little ways off and was pulling the dying shark with a transect rope he’d secured about the tail. I went over to him and lent a hand. We towed it into shore and gave it to the old woman that was sort of in charge of the little village we were staying in. The cooked the whole thing up and we had a rather nice fiesta. Bull shark washed down with a bottle each of Flor de Cana Especial.

I cut the jaws out and brought them home. For years they were nailed to the wall and I used them to hang keys on. A friend of mine, an artist named Peruko Ccopacatty (who is a rather well know metal sculptor) saw the jaws hanging there and asked for them so that he could make me something appropriate to hold it. He made me a metal tube sculpture that is clearly squaliform, but that also looks a bit like a cross, and has the jaws mounted in it. It’s on my wall to this day.

That is one hell of a story Thal. Thanks for telling it.

Would have been interesting had you not had the shark dart with you. What would you have tried then?

 

[Thalassamania]

I don't know, at moments like that you do what you do, and use what have, ex post facto "what ifs" leads to a lot of rationalization and BS. I suppose that I'd have kept trying to fend the shark off with my billie as I worked my way to shallow water and finally shore, who knows?

 

[RickI]

Thank you for the story and shark dart image. We used to sell them in a Ft. Lauderdale dive shop around that time. Some said they were fairly unreliable with no release of gas on impact at times and even broke in half during use. I am glad yours worked as intended the second time around. Great story.

As an unrelated aside but perhaps in response to folks decrying such things, over 35 years later (?!), here's a video. It was shot within the last two months. Not all free swimming shark encounters are negative although if one draws blood as happened to Thalassamania even with a shark billy, there's a good chance your encounter is going to hell, fast. Hope you are lucky enough to have an option to bubbles and fins in managing the situation.

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http://fksa.org/showthread.php?t=9059