I'd actually really like to hear more thoughts from Dan Volker on this subject. I really don't know for sure if the shark feeding is a bad idea or not, my gut feeling says its a bad idea. Chumming the waters and feeding the sharks in an area has to have some effect on their natural behaviors (esecially when its done so consistently in the same location). Does this not have the potential to alter their migratory patterns? Does this have the potential to create a dangerous association on those sites for the sharks and other groups of divers? Is it ethical for us to trick these creatures into being a tourist attraction by luring them into an area? To me the chumming and feeding devalues the shark sightings as I equate that to going to the zoo. I also just want to spearfish now a days and I really would rather not see the sharks for obvious reasons.
I would love a better understanding on this subject so I can make an informed opinion on whether this should be a viable practice for dive charters in our area. It clearly is a tactic to fill seats, and if its deemed environmentally responsible and relatively safe why are more charters not going 3 miles out and shooting a bunch of jacks to draw in the big ticket items (Sharks!!!)?
Well thanks for asking for my view
I have been thinking alot about this.....
First, a little history on the ban....when it went into effect, it was a reaction from some commercial spearfishing guys, mostly around Boca or Pompano I think...and they really did not want shark feeding because of their own agendas....I don't know if this was because sharks were more apt to steal their shot fish after the feeds, or if they did not want the public to start seeing sharks as valuable for tourism( these guys were commercial fisherman afterall, meaning shark finning may have been just fine by them).....whatever the root cause, they created a movement, and got a loby, and created a bogus law--one that had all the wrong reasons for being made...They had as a co-consprator, a magazine called CDNN...a sort of National Enquirer of Dive Magazines-though this is horribly unfair to the National Enquirer to compare them
So we have a bogus law...that can be a different thread...Let's assume for now that the it is irrelevant, given we can legally do shark dives 3 miles out or further off Juno and Jupiter.
I spearfished from the 70's up until about 3 years ago, when I began shooting with a video camera instead of a gun....I had sharks wanting to take my fish many times.....the old-timers like Frank Hammett I did most of my spearfishing with, were vehement that you never let the sharks take your catch...that it would cause bad behavors if they learned this was an easy meal. Related to this, I am well aware that you"can" keep sharks from biting you with a struggling fish on a line, but it can be hairy....and it is NOT a underwater experience that I would want visited on my wife Sandra, or many other friends of mine that are good divers, but that do not have experience in the best ways to avoid being bitten by an aggressive shark--and who would not want to be in the water with an aggressive shark posturing at them....And, if I really thought behavior like what Randy was doing would factor into this, endangering others, we would have me going postal over this issue..... In fact, Jim Abernethy convinced me this was not going to happen.
Jim happens to have more time diving free( out of cage) with huge tigers, bulls and hammers that just about any other diver on the planet....and arguably, Jim has the best behavioral grasp of any in the shark game today.... Whether he is the top like I say, or among the top--he has good insights.
Jim feels that the sharks are smart enough to know how to get an easy meal. They know a diver without food, and they know when a diver DOES have food( fish). They may take
slightly" more notice of divers today where Randy does his spearing based shark attracting....but for divers without fish and not in Randy's group, the sharks just won't waste their time. So this might be a tangent, one I could get Jim to add some more to...
Then there is the issue of non-feeding shark dives where dead fish are used as bait....where the sharks come in slow, curious, hang around for a while, and then leave. This is the kind of Shark dive I would want for Palm Beach dive Tourism. It is easy enough to have divemasters assisting in keeping a group together in the right areas, and to keep the divers acting properly....and to have something ( camera or PVC) in each diver's hands on the off chance that a shark gets curious enough to want to act like we do with something we are curious about--the way we pick something up in our hand, and look close...this is a test bite....and it is easy enough to avoid in this scenario.
Why should we have such dives?
- When people have never had contact with an animal, or with something, it is hard to be connected to it enough to CARE much if this animal or thing is in danger. Sharks have it even worse since Jaws. If we could show a large chunk of the US population, that sharks actually are as intelligent as the family dog, that they have personalities...some like a collie, some like a black lab..some like a "nice pit bull"..some like a "not-so-nice-pitbull"....If we can either anthropomorphize them a bit, or at least help show the real nature, and the "RIGHT TO EXIST", then when the Chinese begin lobbying for permission to take some small city sized trawlers through American waters to kill sharks and fin them---then maybe the people of the US would be out-raged, and they would make this politically impossible to be allowed.
- Economically, as we show sharks are worth millions for Shark tourism for each shark, but only a hundred or so for each shark when they are harvested for finning--this is a powerful message to our government.
- And the shark dives are really fun, when run with just the dead bait, and when the sharks don't get to eat ( the eating gets them worked up, even of dead fish). We dive for adventure--this is big adventure.
