As much as it pains me to have to say it, DD is correct in this thread. Great Whites have always been through our area, just not in big numbers, and not usually where people are diving.
There used to be a shark fishery managed out of Fort Pierce or Stuart.....it allowed 100,000 sharks per year, till it was closed around the 70's.... Each year about 1% of the sharks caught were Great White Sharks.
Also, Craig Suavely shot video of a GW on the Hole in the wall back around 1993...you could see the big ledge as Craig swam along at about 125 feet down, plenty of AJ's and grouper....then in the 90 foot vis, you see this big shark coming in the distance....Then, as it get closer and coloration become distinct ( and clearly Craig realizes the ID of what he is filming), the video perspective begins to change...rather than head on, the camera begins to be higher than the shark, then quite a bit higher, and then as the shark swims under him, the zooming out feature is considerably utilized
Of course, when he realized what the shark was, he decided the best vantage point for filming would be from the boat
I have seen one mako off of one of the 270 foot deep hopper barges off of singer island...this was during deco for my group, when i was doing safety diver duty. The mako is not particularly comfortable to interact with either ( not nearly as friendly and sociable as our local bullsharks
....the boat came by when the Mako began posturing around me, and gave me my double barrel Ultimate gun. Virtually as soon as I had it, the Mako appeared to know the game was different, and no longer had any interest in posturing or circling around--it just left......It would have been my job to deal with the Mako, with 5 divers at the 40 foot stop , and no way for them to be at the surface sooner than 40 minutes later.
Oh yeah, the point..... I think most fish that have been shot at, know what a speargun is. I think some shark species are considerably smarter than others, and the way they deal with speargun toting divers could be a fascinating research project for someone.
Some, like our local bullshark population, out where the cobia are shot in their midst, appear to be seeing humans and rivals, as opposed to a passing form of marine life they dont have reason to pay attention to......Now, suddenly, as rivals, they do....
It could be that the GWS, the Mako and the tiger sharks are smarter than the bullsharks, and better able to make distinctions about the best course of action to follow when seeing a speargun toting diver.
We know GW's are very careful to ambush their prey, and avoid any chance of injury--this is a higher form of intelligence than we would assign to the bulls I think.
We know that some tiger sharks have very distinct personalities, such as the 16 foot tiger shark known as "Emma" that has become friends with Jimmy Abernethy--the shark swims with him like they are best friends---it is in his new movie.. See
http://www.thisisyourocean.com/thefilm.html
The form of human interaction that occurs is likely to have an effect on the sharks, and different speices will have potentially very different processing abilities and social interests, and other verying degrees of territorial agression which can be triggered by certain forms of human interaction.
Everyone should see the Abernethy film.. it is not like anything else I have ever seen, and this Emma shark is a game changer..
