wadalyfe
Registered
Gotta say Deefstes - I agree with you. We're guests, not conquerers. "If it's not yours, don't touch it!" Mother taught me well.
To touch or not to touch?
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seaducer
Contributor
My pet theory is that we are over fishing their main prey sources, which drives the sharks in closer to shore to search for near shore stock, and that in turn puts more sharks in contact with people. I have no evidence either.
Though really the number of attacks is still so small.
ChevaYEA
Contributor
I'm sure someone once said that about dogs, horses, ferrets, cats, etc at some point in history.
Agreed.
We were just having this discussion here in the Northwest recently. For many people, the motivation of diving is seeing things in its natural environment, doing what it does. For others, it is the interaction with those critters that attracts them to diving. Still others prefer to spear it and eat it. The hobby belongs to all of us so it would be cool if everyone's opinions were respected, even when they aren't conservative.
But then again...I'm a toucher so what do you expect?
wngdwolf
Guest
Actually, a lot of animals, particularly mammals, like to touch and interact physically. Obviously one has to be smart about it - any animal is dangerous under the right circumstance. MY approach to any animal is to gage its mood and be careful. Whether its a dog I don't know or a wild dolphin, it will be either receptive to touch or not. If not, it will let you know before you touch them. I see my job as being respectful if they aren't receptive. My experience with this comes primarily from training horses, but I find the principles apply to all animals: respect, communication, and finesse. Never Never bullying. We don't have the RIGHT to touch or interact with them, even if they are our pets. It is very much a privilege. But they have the RIGHT to decide if they want to be touched or not. We have the RESPONSIBILITY to respect them if their answer is "no."
As to have them get up close to a shark to see it's beauty and fall in love with diving with them. The problem is you can do thousands and thousands of dives and NEVER see a shark. The truth is sharks are scared to death of divers. We sound like a fire truck under water to them. The noise that comes from our bubbles and 1st stage scares them away. If you are diving on a live aboard in the Galapos Islands the DM's will tell you to "control" your breathing while you are hanging on the rocks in the strong currents at a hunderd feet. As you can guess, Control means hold your breath and do not breath. The hammerheads will make a big circle around you if your breath.
Sharks are very hard to train.. Few creatures have brains as small as they do. That is why the Shark divers in Fiji go out ever day of the year to feed the sharks even when they have NO divers with them. They forget so quick. IF you are ever in Fiji make sure you do the Beqa Adventure dive which is a Shark dive. They have the biggest Bull and tiger sharks I have ever seen. Bulls over 10 feet and tigers to 18 feet and they come so close they bump into you. YOu can catch it on line.
IT is so rare for a diver to ever get bite. Almost every diver ever bite was spearfishing. At least 99.9 percent of all shark bites are by mistake. IF you notice almost all of them are in the surf where the shark feed on bait. When they see a flash of white from your foot or arm it looks like a fish to them.
YOU will notice that 99% of the shark bites are just a bite and NOT a attack. As soon a the shark figures out it is not a bait fish it lets go. Even a baby 4 foot shark could tear you up if it wanted to attack a human. This is NEVER the case. In Fla where I live we can have 200 bites in a single summer but they are little 4-5 foot sharks feeding in the dirty, murkey water of the surf.
In the pan handle a young boy was bitten badly by a Bull shark a few years ago but he had fish tied to his waist.
Having shot thousands of pounds of fish over the past 25 years I have got to "dance" with a few sharks.. They are never after me just my fish.. I have never lost a fish to a shark or had to kill one that was dancing with me. Some of them I had to poke well over a dozen times because they kept coming back again and again and they now have a few white dots on their heads.
When I was a kid growing up in the 60's the only good shark was a dead shark. YOU always killed any shark you caught because that was the right or smart thing to do.
As a 12-15 year old kid I am sad to say I personally killed at least a hundred small 5-7 foot sharks with my knife beside the boat after I caught them.
Today as a avid fisherman and Dive Instructor I do my best to tell the public the truth about sharks. If I catch one I do my best to remove the hook before I relase it. I have brought several large sharks into the boat and sat on them to remove the hook and then set them free unharmed.
You could get bite while at a shark feeding as happend last year in the Bahamas which is VERY rare but for a diver some place else to get bite because of feeding sharks will never happen.
I got a easy 5,000 dives carrying bloody fish with me and only had to "dance" with the sharks about 10 times. Which by the way is quite a thrill, kind of like being in a ring with a bull but in this case the sharks always swims away, only mad because he did not get my fish.
A fact to remember, more people die from falling coconuts the sharks bites every year. When a person tells me he is scared of sharks them I ask him are you afraid of coconuts, they kill more people then sharks do!
Sharks are very hard to train.. Few creatures have brains as small as they do. That is why the Shark divers in Fiji go out ever day of the year to feed the sharks even when they have NO divers with them. They forget so quick. IF you are ever in Fiji make sure you do the Beqa Adventure dive which is a Shark dive. They have the biggest Bull and tiger sharks I have ever seen. Bulls over 10 feet and tigers to 18 feet and they come so close they bump into you. YOu can catch it on line.
IT is so rare for a diver to ever get bite. Almost every diver ever bite was spearfishing. At least 99.9 percent of all shark bites are by mistake. IF you notice almost all of them are in the surf where the shark feed on bait. When they see a flash of white from your foot or arm it looks like a fish to them.
YOU will notice that 99% of the shark bites are just a bite and NOT a attack. As soon a the shark figures out it is not a bait fish it lets go. Even a baby 4 foot shark could tear you up if it wanted to attack a human. This is NEVER the case. In Fla where I live we can have 200 bites in a single summer but they are little 4-5 foot sharks feeding in the dirty, murkey water of the surf.
In the pan handle a young boy was bitten badly by a Bull shark a few years ago but he had fish tied to his waist.
Having shot thousands of pounds of fish over the past 25 years I have got to "dance" with a few sharks.. They are never after me just my fish.. I have never lost a fish to a shark or had to kill one that was dancing with me. Some of them I had to poke well over a dozen times because they kept coming back again and again and they now have a few white dots on their heads.
When I was a kid growing up in the 60's the only good shark was a dead shark. YOU always killed any shark you caught because that was the right or smart thing to do.
As a 12-15 year old kid I am sad to say I personally killed at least a hundred small 5-7 foot sharks with my knife beside the boat after I caught them.
Today as a avid fisherman and Dive Instructor I do my best to tell the public the truth about sharks. If I catch one I do my best to remove the hook before I relase it. I have brought several large sharks into the boat and sat on them to remove the hook and then set them free unharmed.
You could get bite while at a shark feeding as happend last year in the Bahamas which is VERY rare but for a diver some place else to get bite because of feeding sharks will never happen.
I got a easy 5,000 dives carrying bloody fish with me and only had to "dance" with the sharks about 10 times. Which by the way is quite a thrill, kind of like being in a ring with a bull but in this case the sharks always swims away, only mad because he did not get my fish.
A fact to remember, more people die from falling coconuts the sharks bites every year. When a person tells me he is scared of sharks them I ask him are you afraid of coconuts, they kill more people then sharks do!
perdidochas
Contributor
However, there have been several sharkfeeding participants bitten in the last few years--namely Erich Ritter, and the recent fatal attack on the Austrian diver.
No, his uncle was fishing in the area, but the boy didn't have fish tied to his waist, nor was his uncle sharkfishing.
I would never say never. There is some evidence to suggest that sharkfeeding is associated with increased aggression in sharks:
CDNN :: Lifeguard Loses Foot after Shark Attack in South Africa Shark Feeding Area
CDNN :: Shark Feeding - Shark Attack Victim Sues Bahamas Resort for $25 Million
CDNN Eco News :: Shark Attacks Snorkeler Near Florida Shark Feeding Site
Yep, but there is no sense increasing the chances of shark attacks by feeding them.
seaducer
Contributor
I have to disagree that those stories may be evidence of anything. In the first link, in S.A. you have an attack on a swimmer in the surf, entirely consistent with the vast majority of shark attacks on humans, even well before anyone ever fished for them, let alone dove and chummed them.
I am not sure what to make of the Bahamas incident, but journalistic beauties like "bloodthirtsy shark" make me want to find a more credible and less bias source of information. And have there been an increase of incidents in the area? 1 attack does not a problem make.
The third incident involved a 3ft nurse shark. I think there might be more to the story, every nurse shark attack I ever read about was preceded by "I grabbed the shark and then it just bit me". Need mroe information and credible biased (edit-make that UNbiased) eyewitnesses the the sharks behavior leading up the bite.
As for Erich Ritter, please, he was placing fish between his legs and forcing the sharks to push him out of the way when he was bitten, in the surf zone. A little extreme, to say the least.
And before we condem the shark dive operators, we need to shut down all those fishing piers where people are constantly chumming and catching fish right next to the bathers.
At least the feeding dives are taking place off shore.
on_two_wheels
Contributor
Ummm.....okay. I'm guessing you mean you actually caught the sharks on a line? If so, that's entirely different than shark dives.
I'd agree that there is no evidence that shark dives are causing an increase in bites. However, there is also no evidence that it won't!! Like I said previously, it could take another 10, 20 or even 100 years. I do think that it will eventually happen, though.
So without any evidence one way or the other, all we have is gut instinct, and any discussions we have about it is just one person's unsubstantiated opinion against another's.
Tom
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