Marine Life Terrible shark attack TCI

[Dan]

Getting too close to a shark, especially Bull shark, in the shallow is just looking for trouble. The shark would only see hands, arms, feet and ankles, which look like fish (especially bare white skin) much smaller than when we are completely underwater with dark color wetsuit.

We are as big as they are. So, if the shark see us underwater, it would be less likely to bite us.

I’ve been diving and in close encounter with Bull, Nurse, Gray Reef, Whitetip Reef, Blacktip Reef, Scalloped Hammerhead, Great Hammerhead, Guitar,Thresher, Spinner, Silky, Lemon, Oceanic Whitetip and Tiger sharks. They don’t bite you, much less attack you for no reason.

 

[Dan]

 

[Centrals]

What a load of non sense.
Even domesticated animals will attack for no apparent reasons, let alone wild animals.

List of selfie-related injuries and deaths. Interesting read.

 

[Allen-1]

Is that really a thing???

Unfortunately, yes.

 

[Pearlman]

How did you know that she patted the shark on the head with one hand and did a selfie with the other hand? If she did so, how both of her hands got bit off?

Ok I was trying to imagine how it could have happened, and I missed the bit (pun unintended) about losing both hands

It is understood the 55-year-old had one of her arms amputated below the wrist and the other half way up her forearm

Likely holding the cellphone in both hands with arms outstretched just above the waterline while bending forwards, trying to shoot a video of the Shark and then it lunged at her hands?

 

[ginti]

I'm not sure why people have a problem with "attack"? Do you have any alternative words that fit better than attack?

Because it was not unprovoked, as the victim was heavily interacting with the animal beyond any reasonable ways.

Technically speaking, however, the right wording would simply be "provoked attack".

For those worried about the impact of this accident, statistics take into account the difference between provoked and unprovoked, and this accident will be forgotten in a few months (weeks or days maybe), or not even read by most people - so I would not make a drama about it.

It only feels pretty bad for the victim - sure, silly behaviour, but nobody deserves anything like that.

 

[tursiops]

Is that really a thing???

Yes. People do dumb things.

 

[Scubagermany]

Yes. People do dumb things.

Yea you are right.

We do not have bison here.

But they are basically cows.

People in Germany do not endanger their lives by taking photos with a cow.

 

[inquis]

This appears to be quite similar to the people who get attacked by buffalo as they try to get selfies.

Or moose or elk or ...

 

[Dan]

Ok I was trying to imagine how it could have happened, and I missed the bit (pun unintended) about losing both hands



Likely holding the cellphone in both hands with arms outstretched just above the waterline while bending forwards, trying to shoot a video of the Shark and then it lunged at her hands?

I have never seen a bull shark breaching out of the water to bite on a prey. I have seen a great white shark chased a prey like seal from depth to the surface so fast and the lunging force brought itself out of the water. That action is definitely a shark attack on its prey, like you see in this video, below.




More likely scenario is she reached down with both hands underwater towards the shark. The shark looked at the 2 white hands and mistakenly thought they were fish filets and bit off the hands.

That Bull shark was reported to hang around in the shallow for 40 minutes. So it must be hungry and desperately looking for anything that looked like food. A couple small white hands in the water looked very appetizing for that hungry shark.

We are told by shark handler to wear dark color gloves, hood and fins to avoid the shark from thinking the white hands, fins and blonde hair are food.