Seems there was another fatal Shark attack........

[lightwiz]

Once again --- swimmer attacked by shark, NOT a diver.
There is a BIG difference between swimming on top of the water and diving down IN the water. When on top of the water, swimmers and surfers look like seals, the favorite food of most shark species. When down IN the water, divers are scary to sharks. We make too much noise and smell like nasty wetsuits and chemicals. We don't look anything like what they want to eat.

+1

Personally I wouldn't dive during chumming no matter what the vis.

 

[ereediver]

I'm no expert, but I have watched some shark specials on TV. Did not stay at a Holiday in Express. Some quick points I think are relevant. First, poor fellow was a tourist possibly had no idea of the shark issues. There were no warnings other than murky water, unless that is a shark warning on the African Coast, but the article did not say that. Last he was standing in the water. Seals don't stand do they? From what TV taught me, we all know how reliable that is, Great Whites attack to either eat, predatory, curiosity, or in defense. Taking an educated guess by the witness, the victim was bitten in half, or close to it first strike and the rest was taken. Sounds predatory to me. No surf board and standing. Maybe at least as the African coast is concerned, people need to think about what are place is on the Great Whites menu. Just a thought.

 

[wcbdiver]

Yes, sharks don't want to eat us. If the water is murky and you go swimming in a known shark area, espically where great whites are, then you are asking for trouble. I was diving with Bullsharks in Playa Del carmen, and food was present, within minutes we were surrounded by 20 or more bull sharks at 90 feet deep. One of the sharks hit me with its fin when it was swimming past me. They have no desire to eat us. But, bullsharks can't see very well to begin with. So a swimmer on the surface might get a taste test, especially in murky waters. Have a look at the video of that dive with bullsharks. They are powerful creatures that need to be repected.

YouTube - banffski's Channel

J

 

[fisheater]

Us NorCal divers ALWAYS dive in "murky" water and Great Whites (locally "the Landlord") accumulate along our coast in large numbers. Some places are considered "too sharkey" and we generally don't dive there, but we routinely dive other areas very close.

Not much in the way of a problem here. At least not with divers. Surfers, on the other hand . . . .

The way we see it, if divers were on the Landlord's menu, there wouldn't be any divers in the water.

 

[mohave_steve]

It is comforting to know that sharks are not interested in us divers..... Only surfers and swimmers..... I allways make a point to keep that in mind while I a bobbing around waiting for the dive boat to pick me up at the end of a dive

 

[Bronson]

3 people were killed on the NYC subway last week...guess there are sharks on those trains as well. Guess you have to be aware of your surroundings always and not look for trouble. I have dived with sharks , not GW or Tigers though, but I take a taxi when in NYC as if that is safe

 

[ancientdiver]

I've followed this board for a while, and have yet to see anyone refer to the statistics/data available online at the International Shark Attach File, which is kept by the Florida Department of Natural History (under ichthyology). Attack statistics are broken out every which way but sideways. There is a section on attacks on divers. If you really hunker down with this data and look closely, you will learn that yes, there are far more attacks on swimmers in decade of 90s than divers (743 vs. 192), there are far, far, far more swimmers in the ocean than divers. So the conclusion of these folks is diving puts one at a higher risk than swimming (hey, don't curse at me, I'm just the messenger). There are a lot of amazing statistics buried here, like, your odds of surviving an attack at depth (>80ft) arer damned slim, probably because the guy has a lot more time to make passes at you when your are deep than shallow). Interesting stuff. Whitey gets most divers, followed by Tigers, then almost as many by bulls. Check it out. What's really interesting is all the attacks that are fatal that are excluded from the database - and I mean a lot. Like, if you are attacked and killed after just entering the water, and you had a speargun, but had not yet speared a fish, it is considered a "provoked attack", and is excluded from the database. Ditto for shipwreck victims. And airplane crash victims. The exclusion list is really quite long. Check out the "shark attack survivors" website. They have a lot of issues with the official attack file - like maybe Florida doesn't want folks to know just how many attacks there really are. Check it out. Stay safe. Have fun. Will in Sarasota

 

[bsee65]

I don't know about those stats. Scuba separated from snorkel? Spear fishing separated from observation-only diving? Divers hit at depth separated from those on or near the surface? People feeding or chumming sharks separated out?

It's so easy to misinterpret statistics if you don't fully understand the data sources. I'm not saying your data is bad, just that I wouldn't make too many assumptions about what they mean without careful study.

 

[vladimir]

3 people were killed on the NYC subway last week...guess there are sharks on those trains as well. Guess you have to be aware of your surroundings always and not look for trouble. I have dived with sharks , not GW or Tigers though, but I take a taxi when in NYC as if that is safe

I don't take the subway very often--occasionally I take the 4 up to Yankee Stadium--but not because of safety concerns. It is just an unpleasant place to be (especially compared to the MRT in Singapore). Like the city as a whole, it is relatively safe, but if you restrict yourself to Manhattan below 100th street on the east side and 118th street on the west side, then it is as safe as any large city gets. If you want to ride the subway at night through the bowels of Brooklyn, well, that would be like spearfishing at dusk in murky water off S. Africa--good luck.

 

[ancientdiver]

Regarding the statistics at the International Shark Attack File, they have been tracking information about attacks for longer than most people on this board are old - at least since the 1970's. They look at everything - time of day, vis., temp, depth of diver, depth to bottom, activity of diver, distance from shore, number of divers present, colors of wetsuits, and on and on and on. It's what they do for a living. They used to say that bright orange and yellow are not good colors to wear while diving - but removed this advice because of threats from suits from diver gear makers, inspite of there being evidence bright colors were not a good idea. There are several research scientists and a staff of graduate students - most are divers too. Blowing off the information because it has been analyzed with statistical mathematics is, to me, kind of like sticking one's head in the sand. That doesn't mean you don't take the info with a grain of salt, or ignore your own experiences, or start diving only from the confines of shark cage, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of it. So I would recommend every diver who dives in salt water become acquainted with the information on this website, unless one believes his own opinions or those of his 21 year old dive master with 18 months of experience are superior to 40 years worth of hard science. It's free, it's one click away, and it's the mass accumulation of decades of study on the subject by paid scientists, and you won't find the info in a dive certification training manual (whose main purpose is to get more folks certified so dive shops can sell more equipment, and not scare anybody away -i.e. the quinticential example of highly biased and opinionated information). My main beef with the information is NOT that they overplay the danger of sharks, rather the opposite. They screen out a heck of a lot of attacks by saying they were "provoked" - like surfing, or spearing, or being in boating accident, and on and on and on. It's like the Florida Tourism Board is in charge of the File, and is scared to death the real numbers will have and adverse impact on tourism in Florida - "so make it all go away" seems to be their underlying objective. There are at least two diver deaths in David Baldridge's book "Shark Attack" (now out of print) from the 1970's, both from divers spearing (one was separated from his party and got hit by a Tiger in shallow water near Fowery Rock in Miami, and one was a Navy diver on a recreational dive, taken as the last man headed up the anchor line, near Pensacola. The actual number of attacks, including fatal attacks, in Florida and elsewhere, is much, much higher than what the International Shark Attack File reports, because they screen out a whole host of activities as "provoking" the shark into attack, such as the diver in California who had just jumped off the boat with an unloaded speargun, and was taken immediately by a uber large whitey in one gulp, or the guy off of South Africa that was swallowed whole, tank and all, by a whitey more than 20 feet long (observed by multiple divers in his party), or Randy Fry, the president of the California spearfishing organization, decapitated as soon as he submerged as a freediver, with his buddy right next to him, or the girl at Looe Kay last year that was feeding fish with cheese in a can, and got ass-bitten by a bull. Attacks are rare, but they do happen, and know this from someone who has made a hobby of studying the subject, and from comparing other sources of published information with actual case histories, they are vastly under-reported by the File, and greatly downplayed by the professional dive educators. Yes, they are rare, but the Landlord is out there. I have had three close calls from boats almost hitting me over my 40+ years of diving, and only one "not sure I'm going to make it" situation with sharks, a group of Pacific grey reef sharks in Palau. Here is the link to the file. International Shark Attack File Be safe, have fun. Will in Sarasota