I don't disagree with you about Ritter being a dick. but I wanted to point out not to be complacent. Lot of red meat speak going on here. I don't see all that much difference between the Ritter video and a disorganized Randy dive with guests Scattered around the bottom several minutes into the dive.
In this video one shark seems to get his 1st stage before Randy realizes it was there. Then a guest has to push it off with his go pro. I saw another one of his shark feeding vids where one came in behind without him knowing. Even while feeding the tiger, others were behind him.
And contrary to what Mickey stated, it appeared to me that the sharks were looking for a handout long before the divers ever settled on the bottom.
And lots not forget Randy's experience with that frenzied blowfish that took his digit, lol.
Not knowing the fellow personally, I wouldn't call him a d
for that instance; an idiot maybe, but I don't have the grounds from personal experience to call him offensive (except in terms of giving fellow marine biologists a bad name, which is indirect).
I'm not going to dispute the points you make about the safety measures or lack thereof; as I said above I think with the hand-feeding and nose rubs, especially when there's a whole crowd of sharks around, Randy is playing with fire and over time the odds are bound to go bad on him eventually. The puffer incident is a pretty good example and I wish he'd follow his own advice as presented in the account on the
Emerald's website -
http://www.emeraldcharters.com/stories.htm:
Please be officially advised: Do not mess with the animals; they will defend themselves.
I'd feel better if he toned it down a bit. As far as the customers, he typically gives them a "stay-back" distance (at least for while he's laying out bait) and will hit the buzzer if he sees you downcurrent of him. The last time I was out, when he baited off the stern of the
Esso Bonaire, the rest of us were perched up on the fantail while he was down in the sand with the food. The Markus Groh incident at Tiger Beach gets brought up more than a few times as a reason not to get downcurrent of the bait. I'm not saying those precautions are adequate or strictly enforced, but you are warned. To me, it comes down to where the line is between the divemaster/captain's responsibility for your safety and your own recognition of your limits. That's a question I continue to ask myself about these dives.
I know I've seen posters on here try and direct inexperienced divers to the
Emerald for shark dives, but I do not agree with that. I've got twelve years and ~450 dives under my belt, with about a fifth of those on Palm Beach County drift dives and quite a few diving solo out in white shark country, and I consider shark diving off the
Emerald to be near the edge of my comfort level. In my opinion, one should not get on that boat unless they know what they're in for and accept that. I do it because quite frankly I've gotten to a point in my life where I want to get out and do the things I've wanted to since I was a kid. One of the incidental reasons I moved back to South Florida almost two years ago is that the things I want to see while diving are here, where I can go after them on any given weekend. I don't need to sink a few months' salary and a week of PTO for a one-shot trip to Tiger Beach or Bimini or Hawai'i or Cocos Island or Australia; I've got plenty of shark species to see on any given weekend, varying with the seasons, and once in a while some truly rare bucket list item like a whale shark or a great white will come through.
........Crudely presented-------but a video of a video I present you:...Fiji 2010 Beqa Lagoon....
