Sharm El Sheikh Shark Attack - rumour control

[Daggad]

I got the impression from experts that Sharks the size seen the last weeks would not find enought natural prey in the Sharm area ?

Of all the animals in the world I think my biggest dream would be to see a Whaleshark. They are so incredible beautiful !
I have looked for Basket Sharks home i Norway but still no luck. I will find one in the end their numbers are raising in our waters since the commercial fishermen lost interest in them.

 

[ameneon]

And if the solution is to hunt them down then I think this is what should be done.

Good thing that is not a solution then.. You know that they move around..?

So should the tourist industry inform tourists of every possible danger? Maybe tell them to look both ways before crossing the street? And I've never heard anyone try to hide the fact that there is sharks around. Quite the opposite.

Good luck setting up warning signs. Here is a map of the places you can find mako sharks. (One of the attacks was done by a mako.) A 3m long one was caught in one of the fjords of Norway July this year, so you should probably start by informing your family not to swim in the sea anymore.

 

[Ayisha]

Good luck setting up warning signs.

It depends how much the South Sinai and Egypt government, as well as the resorts, travel agencies, etc., want to avoid lawsuits. It sounds like several of the victims and traumatized tourists are already making it known that they feel they were uninformed about the risk of shark attacks and were unaware of recent shark bites in the area and the perceived elevated risk at this time. They and/or the victim's families can easily mobilize toward a class action lawsuit against all of the above. If authorities can be quoted at any time saying that the sea is "safe" to return to, as some have implied in the media right before the fatal shark attack, then the matter is further complicated for the authorities, who should never make such statements. It's called CYA.

Egypt may not be overly litigious, but their clients may be.

 

[Daggad]

Ameneon: show me a link to that Mako in Norway. There is often news about these so far north but so far all I have seen was porbeagles. Sometimes the blueshark shows themselves but they are so cold they can hardly open their mouths. There has never been an attack in Norway from any shark.
You are naive. 4 people has been seriously injured, 2-3 of them lost their limbs and will live with this handicap for their rest of their lives. One is dead. Further 2 dead the last 6 years.
If this is NOT NATURAL behavior then they need to hunt them. IF IT IS then they need to warn and shield tourists.
Believe it or not, there are places with sun, warm water and far safer swimming for the time beeing. And this is what tourists are looking for.

 

[macrobubble]

Here´s what I think:
tourism, that is, diving tourism around Sharm will not suffer from this at all. Divers go to where the sharks are - we all know this. They want to see them, dive with them and take exciting photos.
Granted, the beachcombers might stay away for some time, or at least their numbers will be reduced and this might be a problem for divecenters in big hotels that rely a lot on DSD and introductory dives they get from the hotels clients. The positive side effect of this for us here in Dahab will be that we hopefully will be less flooded by hundreds of snorkellers from Sharm at the Blue Hole every day. They have become more than a nuisance!
I believe that the public (re-)appearance of Sharks around Sharm will attract additional divers, that used to take Sinai not even into consideration when planning their holiday. They were mainly thinking "South"...
Not that I welcome these incidents, far from it, the human tragedy is far to great, but maybe it puts the Sinai peninsula again on the radar of divers that want excitement. Thrill attracts people! Just look at the Blue Hole: many come here just to dive this "dangerous" dive site. That´s how it is known - as one of the most dangerous sites in the world (even if I don´t see it that way).

So, bottom line, the diving industry need not to worry!
Sharm is in the media, if for the wrong reasons. There is no such thing as bad publicity - as long as they spell the name right...

This all might sound somewhat cynical, but it is how I see it.

 

[anassrat]

I like your response macrobubble. Sadly it doesn't solve the problem. I really don't like Daggad's response of hunting sharks. I have been following all the posts so far in the last two weeks and decided to post myself for the first time.

I am a Canadian/Egyptian diver and I am currently in Egypt for non-diving reasons. When I heard of what is going on in Sharm I decided to head to Dahab to get in the water in hopes that I might see something. I was there for the last three days and overall things are very quiet.

I definitely agree that divers will be attracted to go and dive in Sharm. I just want to see a proper analysis to this shark issue so that the 50 logged dives min is removed and everyone can understand the situation better.

The concept of CYA does not exist in this part of the world and I personally don't believe in it. It doesn't solve any issues and really doesn't make anyone more transparent. If we started putting signs saying beware of the sharks then these signs will go up everywhere even in places where sharks where never seen just to CYA. So we really get nowhere.

On the other side I definitely do not like it when people downplay the presence of this animal like we have here in Egypt, but to be completely frank. The locals here don't say that there is no shark to give a false sense of security to tourist. They don't know and the common response for an Egyptian when they don't know is not to say "I don't know", but to make up stuff. So this is what it is all about.

Just my 2 cents!

 

[Christian]

Ameneon: show me a link to that Mako in Norway. There is often news about these so far north but so far all I have seen was porbeagles. Sometimes the blueshark shows themselves but they are so cold they can hardly open their mouths. There has never been an attack in Norway from any shark.
You are naive. 4 people has been seriously injured, 2-3 of them lost their limbs and will live with this handicap for their rest of their lives. One is dead. Further 2 dead the last 6 years.
If this is NOT NATURAL behavior then they need to hunt them. IF IT IS then they need to warn and shield tourists.
Believe it or not, there are places with sun, warm water and far safer swimming for the time beeing. And this is what tourists are looking for.

I don't know about that Mako, but an oceanic white tip was caught in Gullmarsfjorden on Sweden's West coast a few years ago (it was already dying). Yes, it was way out of it's normal territory, but just to give an example that sharks do move around quite a bit. Large porbeagles are potentially dangerous as well, but they seldom move around in waters frequented by swimmers (like OWT:s). And Blue Sharks are considered one of the most skittish open ocean sharks (once again very rarely come in touch with swimmers). And that the Red Sea has sharks is a widely known fact that is hard to deny, even for the most ignorant tourist. When a person in Egypt's tourist industry is asked about sharks, their answer (which is an honest answer) is usually that there are no dangerous sharks. And the reason is that accidents with sharks are extremely rare and that the sharks don't make a "real" threat to tourists. But I agree that it is stupid to say that it's "safe" to go into the water, because there is always risk, even if sharks has very little to do with it. Perhaps the answer will be a different one after the incidents in Sharm.

If it's natural behavior or not is hard to say when we don't have all the facts. But a shark can bite a human. Some circumstances like bait in the water, erratic movements or splashing around etc. increase the risk. One thing we know is that shark bites are very uncommon and that OWT:s are rare in this area.

 

[Daggad]

So, bottom line, the diving industry need not to worry!
Sharm is in the media, if for the wrong reasons. There is no such thing as bad publicity - as long as they spell the name right...

I think so to. For the divers it would be fantastic to have a chance of meeting a dangerous shark.
And this is also why most people in this forum are so critical to my suggestions to hunt for the guilty sharks. If this was been a tourist forum I do not think the response would have been the same.
When I go to Sharm I go both as a tourist and diver. My children loves to swim and snorkel in the beautiful clear blue ocean, and so do I. But untill the chanses of meeting a dangerous shark has been reduced to a minimum, there is no way I am letting them into the water. And to be honest the area do not have a lot to show except from the sea..

Christian: I saw the OWT found dead in Sweden some years ago. They said it could have been brought there on a ship and dumped as a joke.. But of course. Sometimes tropical fish enter our waters. (The Mola Mola is quite frequent). But when they get here they are very slow and dies fast.

 

[Crowley]

Well as a resident of Sharm I am now enjoying my fifth day of unemployment because once the tourist turnaround hit we have seen a massive drop in business here. It should be getting busier and next week should be hectic - if it is not, then we have indeed seen a problem for the tourist industry. February and March are the dead months and the Christmas rush makes up for that.

At no point did the authorities claim the responsible Oceanic White tip had been caught - at least, not to my knowledge. They did suggest that the dead Mako was the likely culprit in the third attack, but the beaches were reopened due to massive pressure from tourists and tour operators. Media reports that everything was declared safe are simply incorrect. People promulgating the media reporting as "fact" are helping only the media.

When it comes to warning signs - okay there are no signs warning about the dangers of sharks in the water. But most of the beaches have signs about the illegal feeding of fish, spearfishing and dumping of trash, not touching the coral. These are summarily ignored by hundreds of thousands of beach tourists who don't know and don't care.

Lawsuits are probably inevitable, because in this day and age nobody wants to take responsibility for anything any more.

Sharm will recover - just like it did after the 2005 bombings. How much damage is done and how many people lose their jobs in the meantime remains to be seen.

C.

 

[Daggad]

Well as a resident of Sharm I am now enjoying my fifth day of unemployment because once the tourist turnaround hit we have seen a massive drop in business here. It should be getting busier and next week should be hectic - if it is not, then we have indeed seen a problem for the tourist industry. February and March are the dead months and the Christmas rush makes up for that.

Sad to hear Crowley.
In Norway it seems that tourists are still booking trips to Sharm. They claim that they have had only 1 or 2 cancelations. (They offered tourist on diving trips to cancel when the accidents happend). Me and a group of 10 is going for christmas.

But I guess the more important groups in numbers are the German, English and Russians.

Maybe the signs is a dead effort. But what can be done then ? Are Shark nets possible at all with the dephts close to shore ?