On 8/21/01 11:33 PM, "Trey" <girvine@be*.ne*> wrote:

> 
> I agree - sharks learn very fast. When Pina and I were diving in the
> Bahamas, they would come up and sit at the transom waiting for us so that we
> basically had to jump on them to get into the water, and then they followed
> us around and got closer and closer until they were obnoxious.
> 
> In Cat Cay, we used to throw the carcasses of the tuna in the water at one
> end of the island from the shore. Tigers 10 feet long would be waiting there
> every evening for their tuna meal.
> 
> I notice that diving here they come rushing up now when they see a diver.
> The thing about requiem sharks in the wild is that it takes them hours to
> get their nerve up unless of course there is feeding going on. Like this
> article says, many have lost their fear.

When diving in the Bahamas over the years, there are several sites where, as
soon as the boat pulls up the sharks congregate. Several years ago I was
diving with some friends close to a feeding site (we weren't feeding sharks)
and a group of about a dozen shadowed us the whole dive, bumping us and
swimming in formation for the whole dive.

When it was clear to them we weren't feeding them, about half peeled off,
but the rest were right there and they all stayed in the area. If they hear
a prop, they congregate, no matter the site.

There's no question in my mind that commercial shark feeds teach them to
associate divers/boats with food. Does that translate into increased
attacks? Well, they don't attack divers and divers are the ones who feed
them, but overall who knows? It can't be good.

The sharks I saw in Fiji, swimming in packs, would swoop up out of the deep,
see us and do a cursory check and then head on, hunting along the walls.
They were clearly wild sharks, almost completely unaffected by man. Our
encounter with them was a lot more exciting to me than sitting on the bottom
watching some guy is a metal suit hand-feed virtually "tamed" sharks frozen
fish.

I was with a group that wanted to do the shark feed dive a couple of years
ago and as my son really wanted to do it, so I joined them. I was pretty
much disgusted by it.

JoeL

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