Diver bit off Jupiter during shark feed.

[chillyinCanada]

Dumpster Diver:

Thanks for the added details. Helpful.

True. I tended to think if lay people were getting seriously hurt often on shark feeding dives that they would've probably been shut down, given the political/litigious nature of society at this time. The definition of 'often' is vague, though. Especially if no one knows just how many incidents happen. I believe in disclosure of risk. Customers should have a reasonable idea of what they're signing onto. But I want adults to have the right to decide for themselves. The staff doing feeding remind me of circus staff working with lions & tigers; there's gotta be some risk there!

Common sense suggests there's some increased risk for others. If I dive out of Jupiter, odds of a tiger shark or big bull attacking me are minute. But, if there are 4 times as many in my general vicinity for whatever reason, there's increased risk.



We saw reef sharks. They did a little feeding. One dive, a perforated 5 gallon bucket with dead lion fish was used to draw in sharks; mainly one big one around 5-6 feet long. On a later dive a guide went around handing the fish out to predators (trigger fish & Nassau grouper, mainly) & either that shark, or one just like it, came in. I was higher in the water column but fairly close, and the shark sort of passed the bottom, turned & rose in my general direction (not direct confrontation; I saw nothing aggressive & suspect that shark was scoping out whether I was after the dead lion fish on the sand). Bit anxiety provoking, but a special memory.

None of the reef sharks I saw came close unless somebody had a lion fish, and the only time I saw that 'get interesting,' a guide carried a dead one around for awhile. 2 Reef sharks wanted it & got competitive. I used to want to someday spear lion fish. Now I'm not so sure. Think I'd want a dive buddy if I did… Another day I followed a guide around & he killed several lion fish & stuck them in a container right away; no shark drama (his were the ones that went in the perforated bucket another day, so I assume they 'got a little ripe').

ChillyInCanada, how close did they get to you, the non-feeding diver, on dives when there was no feeding? Do you not like sharks in the vicinity, or did they get close & inspect you?



Was this on all the dives?



Too far & expensive, but Lord willing & providing, I've got a trip booked this summer for Morehead City, North Carolina, to wreck dive with the sand tiger sharks. Non-feeding dives reputed for substantial numbers of 'fairly benign' (no guarantees) pretty big gnarly looking sharks people can get close to. Warm water part of the year, often good viz.

Richard.

ichard, aha!! I knew someone had been feeding those sharks out at Halfmoon Caye.

I believe that there have often been sharks around on our dives over the years. It's just that for the most part, sharks had no reason to get up close and personal with us.

Having been places where chumming has gone on, I've seen the Pavlovian response. The sharks don't wait for the chum to hit the water or the snap of the spear gun, they come as soon as they hear the boat motors.

I neglected to explain the reason the nurse shark hit my hand. It was because they are used to the divers setting out pieces of lionfish for them after a spearing. The divers often point to where the fish was placed. Who'd have thought that nurse sharks would understand a finger point? Well, me for one.

---------- Post added July 12th, 2015 at 12:03 AM ----------

BBC - Earth - Sharks reveal new super memory

 

[sheeper]

A few questions for clarification:

1) What time scale are you referring to? The feeding ops off Jupiter are a relatively new thing, say 2012/2013 was when it started happening in an organized fashion.

2) What dive sites are you keeping the inexperienced divers away from? Are these the same sites the feeds are done at?

the timeframe is recent. 2014 was a major shift in shark activity and in 2015 it is even more.

as for the sites, it is a personal decision so i'll keep the locations within my group. Don't get me wrong, we still dive the sites; we just don't do them with less experienced divers.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

the timeframe is recent. 2014 was a major shift in shark activity and in 2015 it is even more.

as for the sites, it is a personal decision so i'll keep the locations within my group. Don't get me wrong, we still dive the sites; we just don't do them with less experienced divers.

2014 was also when the commercial shark fishing opener got kicked back to July 1 rather than January 1. The lemon shark aggregation was definitely an event that year, whereas in 2013 I made a lot of dud attempts at finding them. The only "sharky" trip I did that year was one where I didn't see anything, but other folks spotted a tiger, several bulls, and a group of lemons on Governor's Riverwalk. Might have had something to do with the spearos being dropped first; when I got to the Shasha Boekanier it seemed like half the wreck was engulfed in cobia blood.

As far as the sites, understandable. I just try to get some clarification on this because in the past we've had people post about how the feeding is changing the sharks' behavior ... and the "observations" they report are from Volusia County or the Gulf Coast, and may not even involve the same shark species we see in Jupiter. It's possible the sharks from Jupiter cover large distances, but my feeling is that if they're smart enough to learn from handouts they're probably smart enough to notice it only happens at one location.

 

[sheeper]

i'm generally talking about the sites from Stuart thru Palm Beach. On a recent dive at Evans Crary, merely shooting a speargun (not even hitting a fish) will bring in a couple of Bull Sharks. Also recently out of Jupiter on the wreck trek, i've had 7+ bulls follow us up and even draw a little too close for comfort. This was not a spear trip; just a general dive with some new(er) divers. Just never had this kind of behavior. One of my instructor friends had a similar issue with bulls and tigers and had to abort an OW dive with students due to sharkiness. On the ascent he was pushing the bulls off.

 

[sportxlh]

In watching the videos of Randy's dives that get posted on Youtube, there are a couple of nagging questions and thoughts that I've had: maybe some divers experienced with the trips, such as Halcyon or Mscott, can comment on these mental meanderings.

It seems to me that when one uses a fixed spot to feed the sharks, such as the north end of the Zion train, sharks would become accustomed to being fed in that area. If those sharks encounter divers at other sites, they'd be unlikely to associate divers with food, but might associate divers with food on the Zion based on the fixed location of the feeding events. Not unlike what happens at Tiger Beach in the Bahamas.

However, on the deep ledge, it appears that Randy is encouraging the sharks to follow the divers up into the water column, sometimes at what looks like safety stop depth. Without being located at a fixed position on the sea floor such as the north end of the wrecks, but simply drifting with the current well above the sea floor, I've wondered if the sharks fed in this circumstance become far more attuned to associating divers with food regardless of the location of the divers. Maybe they present a greater hazard to divers than those that hang around the Zion train??

These are pure speculations and pondering on my part, but just curious what divers experienced with the drift dive feeding trips think or have observed.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

In watching the videos of Randy's dives that get posted on Youtube, there are a couple of nagging questions and thoughts that I've had: maybe some divers experienced with the trips, such as Halcyon or Mscott, can comment on these mental meanderings.

It seems to me that when one uses a fixed spot to feed the sharks, such as the north end of the Zion train, sharks would become accustomed to being fed in that area. If those sharks encounter divers at other sites, they'd be unlikely to associate divers with food, but might associate divers with food on the Zion based on the fixed location of the feeding events. Not unlike what happens at Tiger Beach in the Bahamas.

However, on the deep ledge, it appears that Randy is encouraging the sharks to follow the divers up into the water column, sometimes at what looks like safety stop depth. Without being located at a fixed position on the sea floor such as the north end of the wrecks, but simply drifting with the current well above the sea floor, I've wondered if the sharks fed in this circumstance become far more attuned to associating divers with food regardless of the location of the divers. Maybe they present a greater hazard to divers than those that hang around the Zion train??

These are pure speculations and pondering on my part, but just curious what divers experienced with the drift dive feeding trips think or have observed.

The sharks are being taught to associate divers with food. This changes their behavior and inhibits their natural cautiousness around divers.

When you train a dog to catch a Frisbee in the park, will he be unable or unwilling to do it at the beach? The training is going to 'be with the animal". Why would sharks be different?

However, when they are artificially aggregated by humans feeding them, then they will tend to become more comfortable with the situation and the fact that many sharks are in one location is going to give the sharks assurance that this situation is "OK". They will be more bold when they watch their peers engage in certain behaviors (and being fed) and they also will need to be somewhat competitive if there are a lot of sharks trying to feed on a limited resource.

Sharks are in some ways like a bunch of cowards or punks.. alone they may me very cautious, but when surrounded by their buddies, they are more bold, much more aggressive. I have seen many clear examples where they seem to hunt as a pack and will, at a minimum, capitalize on opportunities when a target is distracted by one of their cohorts. Other fish coordinate their behaviors while in a school, so I am not surprised when I observe what I interpret to be some level of coordinated activity in a group of sharks that have been aggregated.

Sharks are not stupid, they are VERY aware of each other, their relative sizes and also the behavoirs of divers and other sharks. Sharks do some pretty clear "signaling behavior" which I assume is primarily for communication with other sharks. Teaching them to feed on the wrecks and in open water near the surface is going to change their behavior in a variety of situations or locations.

 

[boulderjohn]

Let me relate a story that has nothing to do with sharks. People are free to relate it to this thread in any way they see fit.

A couple of years ago I went to Cozumel for the first time in a number of years and did a couple days of recreational diving. In the years since I had been there last, there lionfish invasion had changed policies, and now divemasters were encouraged to kill them on sight while leading dives. On our first dive, we were swimming casually along when something suddenly seemed different. It is hard to explain, but the fish behaior was strange. In retrospect, it was almsot like they were pointing to a place on the reef. The DM sensed it as well (as he explained later), and he led us over to that spot. A lionfish was hanging out in a recess. All the other fish gathered around, watching us. The DM gaught the lionfish using two small nets, then sqeezed its skull between his fingers to kill it. He took the linofish out and clipped off the spines with dive shears, then tossed the body to a waiting fish that swallowed it in one gulp. The rest of the fish dispersed.

I had that same experience a number of times in my dives. The fish knew where the lionfish was, and they gathered around to watch the kill and await the feeding.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

i'm generally talking about the sites from Stuart thru Palm Beach. On a recent dive at Evans Crary, merely shooting a speargun (not even hitting a fish) will bring in a couple of Bull Sharks. Also recently out of Jupiter on the wreck trek, i've had 7+ bulls follow us up and even draw a little too close for comfort. This was not a spear trip; just a general dive with some new(er) divers. Just never had this kind of behavior. One of my instructor friends had a similar issue with bulls and tigers and had to abort an OW dive with students due to sharkiness. On the ascent he was pushing the bulls off.

Where is Evans Crary in relation to the Wreck Trek and the Deep Ledge? To answer sportxlh's question, when we feed on the Deep Ledge we usually drop in on the same spot, so depending on the current we're hitting the same 2-4 nm stretch of the ledge (which includes the Hole in the Wall). We usually level off at 80-100 on the initial descent and then work our way up, so in some cases they're with us at the safety stop.

What's interesting is that most of the time - especially on the Wreck Trek - we have a hard time getting the bulls to come in close and a harder time getting them to feed directly from the hand or the stick. They don't commonly show up on the Wreck Trek and this far into summer we usually don't even see them on the Deep Ledge. Not questioning your observations, just saying that we're not seeing that behavior even with bait on hand. That clip I showed was the hands-down bull-sharkiest I've ever seen the Deep Ledge, with 20+ individuals in poor visibility, and we were not having to push them away. Before those segments they were hanging well below us.

The tigers, lemons, sandbars, silkies, and duskies are generally more likely to get close. One of the reasons Randy tells the divers to maintain the same altitude as the group is that if a few people drop down to get a look at the bulls, they'll stay below and not come up to the main group. I've seen footage of them actually turning away from food being shoved in their faces. Florida Shark Diving seems to be the one that gets the highest bull shark attendance and the closest approaches, but generally they're feeding from the boat and not having the snorkelers handle food. Some folks seem to think that makes a difference as to whether or not the sharks associate the food with boats or with humans in the water; I personally have no idea.

I think a little too much is made of the "natural fear of humans" angle; that's one area where I think the conservation movement has overdone things. They are apex predators and under the right (or wrong) circumstances we are a menu option. The last diver fatality in South Florida attributed to a shark was in 2001; the victim was a diver who was last seen struggling with an unidentified shark (possibly for a speared fish). The Broward County coroner classified the death as a drowning while the International Shark Attack File categorized it as a shark attack. I assume the difference in opinion was due to him not actually being bitten. Before that I think the last diver fatality was a bull shark attack in the Keys in 1995.

 

[mmmbelows]

There are more sharks, WAY more sharks, maybe 10 or 50 times more sharks in the local area compared to the way it was 15 or 20 years ago.

I've been slowly dim-wittingly coming to this conclusion myself the last couple of years. Seems I spent the first 20 years of diving rarely seeing sharks, seeing a shark was a big event and they were always shy and reluctant to come close, always keeping a distance. In the last 2 years been accosted by sharks in Belize twice and in Jupiter once. The ones in Belize seemed to me to be the result of being fed, the ones in Jupiter were reacting to a spearo on the trip shooting a fish. Seems to be some big changes going on.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Boulderjohn, I couldn't agree more. Whilst in Belize, I have seen many fish pointing out lionfish and then eagerly awsiting the kill by the dm.

Alternately,as I said earlier, my finger was perceived by a nurseshark to have been pointing out dinner for him.