1997 Deep Dive/Shark Attack.

[HalcyonDaze]

Life rafts on Navy ships launch automatically as the ship sinks. Lifeboats have to be launched by hand, and is a matter of having the right people in the right place to do it. Since the Indianapolis was on a fast transit, not expecting trouble, when torpedoed, it sank quickly and the lifeboats weren't launched. The life rafts act more like debris so it depends where they launch, which way they drift, and how fast, whether someone in the water can catch them.

If they were in battle, there would have been men assigned at the lifeboats ready to launch. If the ship sinks the lifeboats are used to round up people and life rafts to get everyone out of the water. There are not enough lifeboats to carry the whole crew.

One of the issues with military vessels is that lifeboats and liferafts are rather delicate things even without someone actually shooting at you; in footage of the old battleships and cruisers firing you will sometimes see what looks like debris being flung from the ship. That's more delicate items on the deck (planking, life vests, rafts, etc.) being converted into confetti by the concussion from the ship's own guns. There's a reason the exposed light anti-aircraft guns weren't manned when the main battery guns were firing. On top of that, deck space is a premium on warships; you're never going to see a cruise-ship style row of lifeboat racks - even a modern supercarrier carries liferaft canisters along the deck edges rather than rigid-hull lifeboats. By the time Indianapolis was sunk most USN warships had also been refitted to accommodate more light AA weapons and their associated radar and fire control systems, the arrangement of which was often the following: "Is there an open space on the deck? If yes, put a gun there."

 

[HalcyonDaze]

And neither is dead by drowning after passing out.

Of all the fish in the sea, the most common one is the one divers rarely see--a dead fish. Animals that die in the ocean usually get eaten pretty quickly.

Notice that the diver had bites on him when he was found, but that's it. He had not been fully eaten. When I went to Maui more than a decade ago, just before I arrived, a snorkeler had been bitten on the thigh by a tiger shark. He managed to get to shore with the help of other snorkelers who then successfully provided first aid. While they were working on him, the chunk of his thigh that had been bitten off floated in. The shark had apparently spit it out.

A year or two ago, divers ascending at the end of the dive in Socorro were harassed by a tiger shark, and as they reached the surface, the shark attacked one and inflicted a fatal bite. I have been paying attention to these stories for a long time, and it is the only one I know in which a shark attacked a diver that it had identified as "not prey" at depth, with the exception of spearfishers or others with captured fish. It could indeed be possible that a shark made an investigative bite that proved fatal on this man, but I would sincerely doubt it made fatal investigative bites on both of them.

I don't necessarily think not consuming the body indicates an attack on a living diver - in the cases you cite, the key factor was someone had removed the victim from the water. It's just as likely for a shark to bite a corpse and then decide "bleck, no." In the case at Cocos Island (not Socorro), the tiger made a fairly determined effort to target that diver, so it seems to have considered her prey.

 

[yle]

Actually, nitrox vs air makes a HUGE difference. Not to dismiss the obvious and serious risk...

Okay... but saying there's a huge difference in risk between diving to 500 ft on nitrox vs air is like saying there's a huge difference in risk between getting hit by a car or getting hit by a bus.

There might be a few people out there that have been hit by a car several times and have survived. But that doesn't mean it's a reasonable plan to walk in front of a car... and just unreasonable to walk in front of a bus.

And if someone did get killed by the car, I still don't understand how sharks are to blame.

 

[Dan]

If I recall correctly, that incident occurred at Cocos Island (Costa Rica)--not Socorro.

Correct! You got a brownie point!

I just came back home from Cocos yesterday and saw Tiger sharks there almost everyday, hanging around in Manuelita & Submerged Rock. They are sneaky sharks, like to come from behind. I so happened to turn and look as they swam by. As soon as they see me looking at them, they swam away. The big mama looks as big as a van, massive & may be pregnant.

BTW, I was in Socorro in December 2018 and saw no Tiger shark. I’m coming back to Socorro next month. Hopefully I get lucky then.

Here are 2 Tiger sharks that I saw last week in Cocos:

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Correct! You got a brownie point!

I just came back home from Cocos yesterday and saw Tiger sharks there almost everyday, hanging around in Manuelita & Submerged Rock. They are sneaky sharks, like to come from behind. I so happened to turn and look as they swam by. As soon as they see me looking at them, they swam away.

BTW, I was in Socorro in December 2018 and saw no Tiger shark. I’m coming back to Socorro next month. Hopefully I get lucky then.

Here are 2 Tiger sharks that I saw last week in Coco’s:

View attachment 630184 View attachment 630185

A photographer friend of mine tried breaking off from the group at Cocos (might have been a dedicated film trip rather than a regular charter) and noticed as soon as he was alone he got a tiger shark coming in for an inspection. Being a guy whose day job is handling gators, he proceeded to go back to the boat, hand off his tank and BC, and play "injured turtle" on the surface to try and get better shots. The shark didn't take the bait. They definitely have a "rope-a-dope" approach where they lumber around very slowly and then move in when you're not watching.

 

[Dan]

A photographer friend of mine tried breaking off from the group at Cocos (might have been a dedicated film trip rather than a regular charter) and noticed as soon as he was alone he got a tiger shark coming in for an inspection. Being a guy whose day job is handling gators, he proceeded to go back to the boat, hand off his tank and BC, and play "injured turtle" on the surface to try and get better shots. The shark didn't take the bait. They definitely have a "rope-a-dope" approach where they lumber around very slowly and then move in when you're not watching.

That’s how a German diver got smooch by a Tiger shark in Cocos, back in April 2018. He just swam off to the blue, alone & away from his group. Anibal, the cruise director of Okeanos Aggressor described what happened to him.

German diver attacked by shark - Isla del Coco, Costa Rica

 

[drrich2]

A diver got bitten by a tiger shark once he got a bit away from the group (of 10 divers led by a guide off the coast of Durbin, South Africa). Here's a (rather sensationalistic, in my opinion) article with a video down at the bottom, showing the attack. Something to point out...at one point in the video, a man mentions the concern that blood from the injury might draw the sharks to attack. From what I've read and watched online (including a demonstration where a diver working with a pair of lemon sharks nicked his hand with knife to show it didn't trigger them), human blood doesn't seem to be a big trigger for the sharks (fish blood/juices, on the other hand, are another story).

I wonder if that holds true for great whites, which prey on mammals?

Note: in the video there's a bite by a roughly 10 foot tiger shark to the thigh, guy's in a wetsuit, it was nowhere near as damaging as it could've been, and the video isn't gory.

 

[Dan]

I was told that human blood contains a lot of irons, which taste strange to sharks, which have low iron content in their blood. They may bite a chunk off of you, spit it out and eat it again when the blood is out of the meat.

 

[ReelHard]

Still trying to find anyone that knew him personally......