View attachment 174245
I was reading some replies on the bangstick thread and came across divers who said they haven't seen sharks on their dives. On Guam, it was very common to see black tip and white tip sharks. Occasionally we'd see a Tiger Shark or Hammerhead.
We had a rule about hunting around sharks. If we spotted two or more in the area, we'd get out. We could keep an eye on one shark. The visibility was often excellant. Two sharks swimming around was too unpredictable and we'd stop.
On one free diving trip I was on I'd shot a small reef fish and as I went to grab the spear I felt a shark bump up against my wetsuit. It was a 4ft black tip. Fortunately he just swam off. More than once I have had fish taken just moments after they were shot.
When trolling in the tuna schools or on the banks,(underwater mountains) we often lost fish to sharks. The worst of it was when we lost two yellowfin approximately 80lbs each in seconds while fishing Galvez Banks. We reeled in two heads that still had several pounds of good meat still on them.
In Ulithi, a shark would be the first animal you'd see when snorkeling. My friend had one take a bite off his fin while he was spearfishing.
In all these instances the sharks were far more interested in the fish than us. I thought it might be interesting to hear of shark confrontations from other divers. Anyone have a shark experience that wasn't created by having dead or injured fish around? I dove around sharks many times when not spearfishing and have only found them mildly curious, not threatening.
Adventure-Ocean
I have done quite a few shark dives with my good friend Jim Abernethy, who is arguably the TOP Shark behaviorist on the planet ( with hundreds of times more in-water time than any other researchers)
The perspective I would offer is that when we dive a natural and rich marine ecosystem, where there is little effect from fishing ( commercial or personal), where we see lots of big fish, we will see plenty of big sharks.....but they will be non-aggressive, and occasionally curious ( as are many other fish).
If we want to create a rich photographic or video opportunity to film sharks, we use dead bait....and the blood scent brings the sharks in slowly and with curiosity, and without aggression.
Jim says that After millions of years of shark evolution, the behavior is---smell some blood, and slowly follow it to where it seems to be--but in no hurry as most times something else will get there first and the shark can't afford the energetic waste of rushing around when no food will re-pay the caloric/energetic expense.......When a struggling fish is felt, an entirely DIFFERENT behavior results...the shark then KNOWS that the meal still exists, and that if it hurries, that "meal" could be his.....so they blast off fast....and come in fast, knowing that this is a race, and a contest, between them and the other sharks--to get to the struggling fish first...there is no time to be overly curious, or to do much identification by fly-bys....you have to get in fast, and get the fish...
So the fish on a spear, or a fishing line, put a diver in the water with a shark on a mission that millions of years have genetically programmed him to act in a very specific manner on.....He is aggressive, because if he is not first to the food, it will be taken by another. Mistaken identity issues where a diver gets bitten, are quite easy in this scenario, because the shark is more worried about losing a meal that ought to be a sure thing, than he is about curiosity about what the '"meal" might be.....
If you want to spearfish in a big eco-system with lots of sharks, you need to know that they have been signaled that it is time for each of them to eat...and they are hungry, and programmed to go for the meal before another shark gets it.
On the other hand, you don't actually need to hurt them when they come in, typically even just a camera in front of a diver is all that is needed for them to bump into and not experience a food or meal result....
I used to spearfish with a big double barrel 56 inch Ultimate Speargun...big and very heavy--the sharks could"feel' the mass ( maybe from all the metal mass and the electrical sensitivity )....All I ever had to do was wave the gun near the nose of an in-coming shark, and it would deviate. Jim's people on shark dives, the ones without cameras, hold a PVC pipe vertically, and if on the bottom, put one end in the sand--the shark comes in to close, and the pvc pipe is a vertical pole directly in their path, which they bump into--and experience no food, and no joy....and they turn, and keep trying to figure out if a meal is somewhere around....You can do the same with a spear gun...
The big problem is that if you don't kill the fish you shot stone dead, the vibrations will keep making the shark crazy interested in being first to a meal.....This was one reason that back in the 80's, we used to hunt with 9mm disposable powerbeads...a 25 or 50 pound grouper would INSTANTLY go to sleep, so no vibrations....sharks could get mildly curious, but we would never have the frenzy behavior a live struggling fish will create.
If you can't use a powerhead( obviously you can't), then getting a knife in the brain and really killiing the fish instantly, should be a big priority
see this:
Swimming With the Shark Whisperer | Video - ABC News
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