Shark Feeding

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Dayo Scuba

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Messages
161
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Location
Florida
# of dives
I'm a Fish!
Why is it that dive operators feel compelled to offer shark feeding dives. We do not see safari operators offering " Come to Africa and we will take you on a Lion Feeding trip" People have enough sense to know that hand feeding lions will not have a good out come. So why when some breath compressed gas they do not have the common sense that god gave a goose. A wild animal is just that. Not trained, and as my mother would say "it will be all fun and games until someone is eaten". What are we thinking. OK so who wants to go on a world wide trip? We can start in Africa to feed our hands to the lions, I mean hand feed the lions. Then we zoom off to India because it is imperative to feed the tigers. Just like pussy cats. Just think they just might purr. Of course as long as we are in the area we should dangle a rat or two in front of a king cobra. Next stop north to Russia to play with the Russian wild bears. Cute furry guys we can feed them honey. Next stop the arctic to hand feed polar bears. Hey we can bring them a fish or maybe seal. Might be hard to hand feed a whole seal so we can cut it into steaks. Since this is now taking a while lets head for the Pacific Coast of California and do a shark feed with the great whites. We should save some seal for them. That is how this idea started, with shark feeding. So does this trip sound stupid, yet we read about someone getting bit by a shark while feeding it and dieing every few years. I suppose it make good reading at the Darwin Awards.

So please add any ideas you may have as to where else our world trip should go. Remember we are the ones with the large brain to body ratio and opposable thumbs
 
I did a trip that offered a feed in the Bahamas last year. Everyone on that liveaboard but one person was there for the feed. It was an amazing experience and one of the reasons I decided to become a professional diver (in hopes some day I wil be able to work with sharks). I understand the cons of feeding, but the one main pro is the revenue. Hopefuly governments will see how much money can be made from these feeds and some laws will be put in place to stop finning and fishing tp protect such a large tourism based industry. Bottom line is that we need to protect these animals and any way to make money off of keeping them alive is a great way to keep them in our oceans. I understand it is a bit risky with some species of shark, but looking at the safety record, there is no reason to stop. Thousands of people dive with sharks everyday, and very few are injured.
 
Why is it that dive operators feel compelled to offer shark feeding dives.
1) There are people willing to pay good money to go on one.

The risk is mostly in your mind. In reality, the participants (including the sharks) only rarely get hurt and most people that participate have a great time. Who knows how the sharks really feel about it but they do seem to come back day after day for another free meal.
 
The sharks do associate people with food. I have seen that first hand when the sound of the dingy coming out to drop the bait brought in 10-15 sharks out of nowhere. However, being associated with food is much different than being confused for food. I have also been diving at a known feeding site and I wasn't there to feed them. Once again, the sound of our boat got the sharks attention, but once they came over and checked us out they didn't want anything to do with us. This was a daily feeding sight and to me it seemed as it they knew the difference between a feeding dive and a non feeding dive.
 
It is illegal in Florida and for good reason I think. A guy just died about a year ago from a bite during a feeding in the Bahamas that was being run by an extremely experienced operator. If you talk to the people who engage in this work on a day to day basis, you will realize that it is not that safe and there are a number of accidents that probably don't get reported.

In addition it endangers sharks and spearfisherman when the sharks are habituated to this activity. Just because people make money off the activity, does not mean it is wise or justified.
 

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