Safety of Shark Awareness Dive

[drbill]

Hmmm... I try to avoid making sharks too aware of me. Oh, wait... you mean dives to give divers a more realistic awareness of sharks. Now I get it.

Well, I've dived with sharks in many areas around the world. We do shark dives here off Catalina to film blues and makos, and only use cages on occasion. Even when they are deployed, few people use them except to see what it feels like to be inside. I've had sharks bump me, flee from me, pose for the camera, etc., but I've never had an incident with one. Of course when I dove with great whites, we stayed in the cages to protect them from harm.

Depending on the species and whether chum is present, they generally are fairly safe to be in the water with. I just wish they were as safe in the water from us.

 

[mikeyjoe]

Yep I know Evil Knievel. Im 16. I cant wait. I am into photography, and have my own camera and strobe. Do they let you use strobes? I would think that it may distract the sharks or something. I think i saw a strobe flash in one of the youtube videos, but im not sure.

You can, but I found that the best photos were ones without a flash. There will be little bit of fish and sand on the water, so the flash tended to reflect off these quite a bit and make it look like it was snowing....

 

[diverdwn71]

Awesome videos! thanks for sharing. Our shark dive was a little different. They didn't use the fish ball, we a guy walk around our circle of divers and use a stick and box to feed individual sharks.

I'll admit petting the nurse shark probably wasn't the best idea, but when it kept coming back to us and lying down at our feet we couldn't help it after about the third. (they are just so dare cute) )

Enjoy your dive and let us know how it went.

 

[seaducer]

Of course when I dove with great whites, we stayed in the cages to protect them from harm.

Afraid they might have gotten a case of indigestion?

To the OP, you would be pretty safe on those dives. Of course anything can happen, but you are going to be swimming with a bunch of "fish eaters", or sharks that don't ever look at anything the size of us as food. It doesn't really matter how excited the sharks get, they pretty much ignore people. During such a dive sharks will:

Swim close to you- absolutely.
Bump into you- very possible.
Bite you- highly unlikely, though never impossible.
Drag you off into the deep and BBQ you- Never happen.

To reduce your chance of being bitten still further than what it already is, be still. If you are waving your arms around, it is quite possible that a shark may mistake one of your hands either for holding a fish, or for being a fish. If you listen to your DM's, you should surface with some great memories, and all your digits.

If your are still a little skeptical, stay a few feet away from the group. We all know bad things happen to "other people", so try not to get too close...

 

[diverdwn71]

And if all else fails.....just swim faster than your buddy! )

 

[BKP]

one of my videos of sharks in Bahamas.... there was a feed one afternoon but most of the footage was other dives where the sharks were just there:

and then there was my shark video from Palau this past Dec, we had sharks on every dive, no feeding, just tons and tons of sharks everywhere!

sharks are amazing creatures!
robin

Great videos!

Looking forward to a trip in June to the Bahamas...

Ironic... another irresponsible, mind-melt, 'shark attack' show on Discovery right now...