Tiger Shark - Jupiter, FL 03/23/2014

[Tom Winters]

Ah geez, I just love these posts. All these guided people just feasting on the shark interactions. Bull sharks...tiger sharks... proven eaters of humans. But noooooooo, they're not dangerous. They're beautiful, sensitive creatures that appreciate the positive interaction with humans. The tourist types just eat this stuff up. I'm sure that Disney is looking into the feasibility of this at their Bahamas island.

I normally dive alone, and sometimes at night. Even during the day, I spend most of my dive in the water column between the surface and the bottom. I sure don't want company on those dives. Not most of the bipedal morons in the same ocean, and not any scrounging sharks. With this feeding crap getting popular now, I have to figure out if the .223 or the .357 bangstick is going to be my little friend.

Decades ago now, when I used to dive in Oahu for a living, some guys started feeding the bigass green moray eels on a wreck off Waianae. The really big green guys with lousy eyesight and lots of inverted teeth. The divers used that cheese stuff in a can - extruded cheese and cheese-by product. Fish love that stuff. Real trailer park food - like Vienna sausages.

So I'm on the wreck one day, and this 6' eel with a mouth that I could put my arm in comes along and I gotta tell ya, I did not enjoy that encounter. It took the eel a while to figure out that it was not getting a freebie, and you can't really push them away too easily.

I told the feeder guys that they could keep on feeding these eels all they wanted. If one of my clients got bit or seriously freaked out, there would be repercussions. If I got bit, after I got out of the hospital, I would slit them from stem to stern. I was not nearly as mellow then as I am now. The feeding stopped and that crew moved on.

I'm just waiting for people to hand feed great whites. The cattle on the guided dives will eat that up like Vienna sausages on the 4th of July.

 

[diversteve]

So since she's a big shark apparently she deserves to die if she comes up to a diver who doesn't want to see her?

The point you're missing is that if no one - i.e. Randy or the other boat had previously altered her behavior the chances of her ever coming up to them in the first place are greatly diminished. But he did and apparently (from your video) now she does regularly innocently approach divers in that area. Tigers are loosely territorial so as long as anyone feeds her, that behavior will continue.

And I didn't say she deserved to die - read it again.

did you forget we're entering their ocean?

On this point we agree, their ocean, their rules - if we're going to be in it we need to accept that. Until Randy artificially alters them for the sake of a few dollars. I dive with sharks often - in fact I film them regularly also. But not everyone is so comfortable with an apex predator in the water approaching them. And she is pretty intimidating if you don't know that she's Randy's hand-fed baby. So it could happen.

Note: I don't know Randy, he's just a convenient foil for this debate. If he's such a shark expert, he would know that what he's doing is altering their behavior and would stop. But he's apparently more driven by the show and the profits associated with it. Sad really...

 

[Murfdizzle21]

Ignorant comment. If posting history is representative here, pretty much every diver that dives Palm Beach is "tolerant of big sharks", and most like seeing them.....But, this has NOTHING to do with the majority of these divers being "tolerant" of new aggressive shark behaviors taught to them by divers engaged in hand feeding.

where is your proof of the "new aggressive" behavior? Stories told to you by your dive buddies? I'm with Doug Kahle on this one.. There's no reasoning with you Dan.

 

[Splitlip]

Randy has changed a lot of divers attitudes towards sharks, instead of people seeing them as monsters. Last year the season to catch sharks open on Jan 01, 2013 and divers in Jupiter, barely saw any lemon sharks last year because they were all caught and killed by the fisherman.

14

I thought harvesting of lemons in Florida waters was prohibited.
Sharks

Randy's a friend, but he's hardly worthy of the angelic virtues you seem to want to bestow on him. Remember when a few years ago a blowfish he was molesting took part of a finger.

 

[danvolker]

where is your proof of the "new aggressive" behavior? Stories told to you by your dive buddies? I'm with Doug Kahle on this one.. There's no reasoning with you Dan.

I reason just fine.....and you don't listen. MANY posters on SB have come on and said they have experienced radically different behaviors from the sharks in Jupiter. Are you telling me you have not read any of these posts? Or, are you telling me you don't believe these posters ?

I don't need proof beyond what a few dozen divers have told me, along with all the posts on SB.... I suppose you want to say that each of these divers was fibbing when they said that the sharks were coming in far more aggressively than anything they ever saw before? ..The scary thing is, how can you and Doug ignore the divers that claim they see changes? How can you justify calling them liars? How can you ignore the concerns of these divers ?

How is there no "reasoning" with me?

 

[Murfdizzle21]

shows us the changes, get it on video, show us proof! Maybe these divers were use to seeing sharks at a distance of 20 to 30 feet, one comes within 5 feet and all of the sudden it's an aggressive shark? Spearing Lion fish on tunnels or shark canyon is not smart, we do not feed reef sharks in state waters, maybe the people posting were doing that. Those sharks weren't fed by randy... The reason Doug and I think the way we do and disagree with you, is because we go out every weekend looking for sharks, setting up "buffet tables" for them and have turned up empty many a time. But your friends can get sharks in their face with no bait, no lion fish, no nothing? hard to believe... lots of people like to exaggerate. All I'm saying is where's their proof

 

[djtimmy77]

No video = didn't happen. haha

 

[Murfdizzle21]

I thought harvesting of lemons in Florida waters was prohibited.
Sharks

Randy's a friend, but he's hardly worthy of the angelic virtues you seem to want to bestow on him. Remember when a few years ago a blowfish he was molesting took part of a finger.

I'm definitely not saying randy is a saint, but I'd like to think he has good intentions when it comes to the sharks, besides the $$$$$$$$

---------- Post added March 25th, 2014 at 05:55 PM ----------

No video = didn't happen. haha

What would happen if I made a thread on here claiming to see a great white yet had no video evidence? No one would believe me.

 

[danvolker]

shows us the changes, get it on video, show us proof! Maybe these divers were use to seeing sharks at a distance of 20 to 30 feet, one comes within 5 feet and all of the sudden it's an aggressive shark? Spearing Lion fish on tunnels or shark canyon is not smart, we do not feed reef sharks in state waters, maybe the people posting were doing that. Those sharks weren't fed by randy... The reason Doug and I think the way we do and disagree with you, is because we go out every weekend looking for sharks, setting up "buffet tables" for them and have turned up empty many a time. But your friends can get sharks in their face with no bait, no lion fish, no nothing? hard to believe... lots of people like to exaggerate. All I'm saying is where's their proof

How about you and Doug dealing with how large this number of divers is, that don't like the behaviors they have seen? It is not just a couple dozen...it is a very large group. How is it that you don't see that you are in a very small group, that is making a much larger group feel that they may not be able to dive in Jupiter any more, because of the shark feeding? If you don't think this is the case...ask for this--you will hear it.

If you hear it.....my guess is that you wont care, because you and Doug think that your rights to feed, are more important than the rights of these other divers.

And what exactly is the "Science", that makes sharks so different than all the other predators that have been studied extensively--- and found to become dangerous when fed by humans? Surely you have some "science" that proves that sharks are not like bears, or wolves or cougars, or any other heavily studied wild predator...You guys would never consider just feeding a predator until it's actions prove you should NOT have been doing this, would you? Some kind of study MUST have given you the belief--that what you are engaged in, will not hurt other divers, right?

Finally, if someone was hurt, 6 months from now, or a year from now, on a nice sightseeing dive on the Bonaire , not part of any shark dive........ and the witnesses said that the shark came in fast, out of no-where, went straight into the diver...and the diver was not able to push it away--and was ultimately bite tested....Would this serious u/w injury cause you to consider the alterations in shark behavior from feeding to be complicit in the attack? Or would you deny any relationship if a scientific link could not be PROVEN?

 

[djtimmy77]

What would happen if I made a thread on here claiming to see a great white yet had no video evidence? No one would believe me.

Actually, I would absolutely believe you, I would just be surprised you didn't get it on the gopro!