There's a bill in congress to ban shark feeding dives

[diversteve]

There may be a better section of scubaboard to post this, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

The Shark Forum where you'll now find this..

 

[CuzzA]

I mentioned earlier about the attacks in the Red Sea and wanted to follow up with a reference. Here's part of the story, I couldn't find the full episode, but IIRC, experts theorized this particular shark participated in shark feeding dives.

 

[seeker242]

Shark feeding has probably done more for changing the image of sharks than anything else.

I've heard people say this before. But, what I'd really like to see is some empirical evidence that this is the case.

 

[sheeper]

i always get worried whenever i hear that Congress may do something...

 

[Buliwyf]

Agree'd. I doubt anyone in congress will even read the bill before voting on it.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

First off, I would point out that this bill is a typical legislative Frankenstein's monster - the first section is a very specific "f*** you" to Biscayne National Park's efforts to establish no-fishing zones within the park, written by the recreational fishing lobby. The second section is the shark-feeding amendment and the third is a redefinition of the billfish landing regulations. So there's more than one item in there; I suspect the shark-feeding ban came from this petition which we shredded on here a while back: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission & NOAA, NAUI, SDI, SSI & PADI: Continue the prohibition of shark feeding in state waters Fla. Admin. Reg. 68B-5.005. Stop Baiting-Feeding of Sharks: increase fines, protect federal waters and punish offenders.

Among other things, I wonder if the language in this proposed bill would prohibit chumming or otherwise attracting sharks for the purpose of shooting cobia.

I mentioned earlier about the attacks in the Red Sea and wanted to follow up with a reference. Here's part of the story, I couldn't find the full episode, but IIRC, experts theorized this particular shark participated in shark feeding dives.

Watching that "evidence" hurt my head. That's the sort of "documentary" that makes me pound tequila shots in order to make it through Shark Weak.

2010 Sharm el-Sheikh shark attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shark attack kills German tourist at resort in Egypt - BBC News

Short form, the most likely explanation was that the sharks were attracted by the dumping of sheep carcasses during the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha that was occurring at the time. Open-ocean sharks like oceanic whitetips and makos frequently follow ships to feed off of garbage and offal, and have done so since the Age of Sail. Off Sharm el-Sheikh you have deep water relatively close to shore, which makes it not so farfetched those species would be hunting in range of swimmers.

I think there is some concerns here though and the biggest problem is the lack of data. For example, we know Florida leads the world in shark attacks right. Well is it just purely coincidence that beach goers get bit or perhaps some of these sharks are part of the migrations that come and go from these shark feeding sites? How could we ever know? Note: I'm not stating a position on that just asking questions that are impossible to answer.

IMO, the bottom line is sharks are dangerous by design. The anecdotal reports I've heard from divers who dive weekly for decades in South Florida are the sharks are bolder than ever. Is this a result of simply less resources, an increase in populations since hardly anyone is harvesting them or a result of shark feedings. Maybe a combination of all three. I don't know.

Additional Florida Data :: Florida Museum of Natural History

The overwhelming majority of the bites in Florida are in Volusia and Brevard Counties, more than 200 miles away from Palm Beach. The sharks implicated in those attacks are mostly small blacktips and spinners; blacktips are pretty rare at the feeds (no surprise - they regularly get eaten by bulls and great hammerheads in the wild) and I don't think we ever see spinners. It's a simple case of dirty water + baitfish + pale tourists wading in the surf = shark bites. And that's what they are, "bites." Small shark snaps at something pale flashing in the murk, lets go, bolts, tourist screams for lifeguard, paramedics run tourist to the hospital, tourist comes out with a couple dozen stitches in a hand or foot. Those two species combined account for 36% of the recorded shark "attacks" in Florida.

Bulls make up 20% of the recorded attacks in Florida, but I believe the bulk of those have been on the Gulf coast - again, murky water. Also, this includes a couple of bull shark attacks on spearfishers chumming for said bull sharks to shoot cobia off of them, a practice I showed to one Florida shark scientist whose response was that he was amazed more people didn't get bit in the process.

Lemons - the species that probably gets fed the most regularly on the feed dives and should show the greatest behavioral modifications - make up 5% of the recorded attacks in Florida.

I think the more plausible explanation is not that the sharks are getting "bolder;" quite simply put from about the 1980s onward coastal shark populations in the U.S. were almost annihilated, and it wasn't until the late 1990s that NOAA started heavily regulating the shark fishery. Some species were down to under 10% of their historic levels by then. Sharks generally have long generation times on the order of 10-20 years or more, so it's taken a while for their numbers to start rebuilding. My bet is that a lot of these divers who have dove "weekly for decades" have been diving in the last 20-30 years, during which time the shark population was pretty battered. Now they're seeing more sharks and more species of sharks on a regular basis and they're doing typical shark things like trying to roll spearfishers for their catch (behavior that has been recorded since people first started shooting fish), and this gets interpreted as the sharks being "bolder." Note in the ISAF chart that from 1900-2009, the decade with the most unprovoked shark attacks on divers was the 1960s - when we had a lot fewer divers in the water, but probably far more sharks than we do now.

 

[scuba5150]

These days, Congress is so dysfunctional, not many bills seem to be making through both the House and Senate and being signed by the President.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

These days, Congress is so dysfunctional, not many bills seem to be making through both the House and Senate and being signed by the President.

I'm not going to put my hopes on that in this instance. This is the sort of "simple" thing that might get ramrodded through in an election year (the cosponsor, Marco Rubio, is running for re-election), especially since the first part of it is a wet kiss to the recreational fishing lobby and the second part ... well, if this is a divisive topic outside the dive community, John Q. Landlubber is, generally speaking, still scared ****less about sharks. Honestly, if it does make it to a vote I think the hardest fight will be put up by those who object to the first section.

Public opinion can be unpredictable as well - from what I'm told, 15 years ago the proposal to ban feedings in Florida state waters looked set to fail and then we had the "Summer of the Shark" (which was more "Summer the Media Had Nothing More Interesting to Report"). Thus how we got to this point.

 

[CuzzA]

Good points @HalcyonDaze.

I'm not 100% convinced on the alternative theory to the Red Sea attacks. It's my understanding Oceanic White Tips spend a good amount of time investigating humans before attacking. I can only speculate the viz is likely pretty good there. I'm sure the beach goers were wearing bathing suits that covered their ass so it's pretty unusual that nearly all of the victims were bit in the same location (which was not bare tasty looking skin) and also happens to be the same location shark feeders kept their bait. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don't think so.

 

[kelemvor]

These days, Congress is so dysfunctional, not many bills seem to be making through both the House and Senate and being signed by the President.

That's pretty vague. I can't say I ever remember a time when our government functioned well. Not in my lifetime, anyway. I did read about such a time in American history books, though.

I suspect like most non headline making bills, congresspeople will vote mostly along party lines without reading the actual bill.

I think there's an Eddie Murphy movie out there that used to be funny before everyone found out it was actually a documentary.