Marine Life Shark bite at Grand Bahama

[ChuckP]

Point taken, John. I certainly have no experience dealing with sharks at the surface and excited, especially when that's apparently due to people throwing them food nearby. Perhaps, given your extensive experience and expertise in interacting with sharks, you could comment on what you think is the best, and most practical, course for a responsible operator to follow when such a situation is encountered? It would help me, and perhaps others, to learn your thoughts.

I'm certainly no expert and love to do high caliber things but I also love the thought of tomorrow doing those same things......

Excited sharks in the water, history of sharks being sharks in this area - the worlds a big place - we can go swim somewhere else.

There are thrill seeking activities that have, to me, an unacceptable mortality rate

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

I was in Bora Bora just 6 months ago with the operation Top Dive. On one of our sites, as soon as we pulled up, cut the engine and all prepped to splash...... I'd say at least a couple dozen blacktips showed up and began circling.... which my guess was a natural response to previous feedings. Our boat DID NOT do any feeding. Anyway, several of us, including me, asked if this was a concern and I think they said not to worry about it... (all French but I got the jist).. So we just all splashed and had a nice dive with a couple of dozen blacktips who basically lost interest after 5 or 10 minutes once they realized we were not feeding them. Here's a quick 40 second vid clip I took right before splashing...

 

[drrich2]

Anyway, several of us, including me, asked if this was a concern and I think they said not to worry about it... (all French but I got the jist)..

There's a kind of common sense one can get from spending time around animals of a given type, that someone who hasn't may lack. This is true with dogs, snakes and a range of things. For example, I've caught a wild armadillo before, and interacted in close quarters with opossums, but I know not to try that with raccoons...even though these are all North American mammals of similar size.

In a similar vein, divers in gear plunging into the water and looking around may face no significant threat from those sharks you mentioned. And yet...we'd know not to lean over the side of the boat, put a bare hand in the water at the surface and splash it around. It might be taken for food.

So let's say you're on the boat and need to pee, and you're used to hanging on the ladder waist deep, only your lower body in the water, no wetsuit, just bare skin. What's the risk there, in the situation you describe (or that this woman was in)?

How dangerous a given situation is can depend on subtle differences in how people engage that situation.

I don't know just what this woman did. One of the problems with some of these tourist excursions situations is that people who aren't accustomed to dealing with a given type of wild animal may lack that intuitive sense of how to watch out for themselves. I'm not saying she was negligent or 'victim blaming.'

I hope people considering such activities will do some advance reading up on them.

 

[johndiver999]

Point taken, John. I certainly have no experience dealing with sharks at the surface and excited, especially when that's apparently due to people throwing them food nearby. Perhaps, given your extensive experience and expertise in interacting with sharks, you could comment on what you think is the best, and most practical, course for a responsible operator to follow when such a situation is encountered? It would help me, and perhaps others, to learn your thoughts.

I don't have any particular insight I can offer other than, watch them, stay together, monitor their excitement level, when their speed or body language changes these are important signs.

One thing I can say with absolute confidence is that sharks are unpredictable. However having several hundred interactions does not give me "extensive experience" by any means.

I have extremely limited experience in dealing with sharks and tourist dives. Hand feeding sharks and chumming for them so "people can see they are cool" is not much different than feeding bears or alligators, except those animals only move in two dimensions, while sharks move in three. It is illegal to feed bears, alligators and sharks in Florida.

I generally will jab any shark I can with a spear if they approach close enough for me to do it. I like them to keep their distance. In SE Florida where I dive most often, sharks that have not been habituated to divers, show very little interest unless there is a speared fish around, however all too often the sharks have learned to associate divers with food and this drastically changes their behavior.

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

And yet...we'd know not to lean over the side of the boat, put a bare hand in the water at the surface and splash it around. It might be taken for food.

Totally agree Rich.... When I took that quick vid from the side of the boat I had tweaked the light arms from my tray straight up so was holding those and only my camera was in the water.......and I was definitely paying close attention!

 

[FishWatcher747]

The "shark feeding tourist dives are justified because people gain a respect for a misunderstood species" is complete nonsense.

Stop feeding the sharks and stop giving money to the shark feeding ops.

 

[rmorgan]

I don't know just what this woman did. One of the problems with some of these tourist excursions situations is that people who aren't accustomed to dealing with a given type of wild animal may lack that intuitive sense of how to watch out for themselves. I'm not saying she was negligent or 'victim blaming.'

One thing here, she had more than 500 dives and reportedly lots of experience around sharks/in the Bahamas. One of the articles indicates she hit the shark and it let go--good thing she did.

This is all food for thought; we're booked for Cuba, where sharks appear to be around on just about every dive.

 

[Dan]

This is all food for thought; we're booked for Cuba, where sharks appear to be around on just about every dive.

We didn’t have any problem with sharks in Jardines de La Reina.

 

[Rearviewmirror]

So let's say you're on the boat and need to pee, and you're used to hanging on the ladder waist deep, only your lower body in the water, no wetsuit, just bare skin. What's the risk there, in the situation you describe (or that this woman was in)?

Having done this plenty in Hawaii where there are plenty of tiger sharks I am definitely rethinking how wise/safe that is if you happen to jump in at the wrong time/place.

 

[rmorgan]

In addition to the obvious issue with chumming, there seems to be pretty solid evidence confirming what seems equally obvious—that warming ocean temperatures are influencing reef fish populations and both prey and predator behavior. Surely this is all compounded by the habitat impact of SCTLD and other coral diseases, and both disease and warming/bleaching will ripple through the food chain. So predator behavior becomes less predictable while human desire for spectacle causes them to associate boats (and people) with dinner. What, as the kids say, could go wrong.

Having read a little about Ms. Ernst, I expect she’d appreciate the discussion her injury kicked off, and especially given that her amputation is below the knee, I bet she’ll be diving as soon as she’s healed and fitted with a great prosthesis.