Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Shark feeding in Bora Bora - Paper!


Oh well.

Eric keeps cranking therm out, and I am irritated.
This time it's about those Lemon Shark feeds in Bora Bora, and several Shark bites that ensued, which is incidentally much like what happened with those Lemons in Moorea. 
The description of the events is probably correct and like I said back here, much if not all is a direct consequence of those being multi-user sites with poor and/or not commonly observed feeding protocols, and with competitive pressure and bravado leading to unsustainable practices.
Once again it's same old same old and as such, really quite boring - the more as barring a miracle, those French Polynesian dives are very likely a thing of the past anyway!

But I remain irritated.
This is because Table 1 appears to want to expand those species-, location- and context-specific observations to Shark diving in general, and appears to suggest that especially hand feeding will inevitably lead to bites as per the annoying depiction at the top - click for detail.

No don't worry I'm not going to unleash.
In their generalization, those assertions are simply not correct - and I will gladly leave it at that as we Shark divers know better, and as the naysayers cannot been swayed anyway.

Just this.
Despite of all the breathy punditry, ranging from frankly idiotic to simply frustrating, Shark diving remains orders of magnitude safer than SCUBA - and from a human safety perspective, that is really all one has to know. Choose a responsible operator with good safety protocols both in the water and especially also when it comes to managing potential accidents (= first aid gear and training? Evacuation procedure? Ask!!!), and you should be just fine.
And when it comes to the other real and perceived potential effects of Shark diving, you may want to re-read e.g. this or any other post I've written on the topic.

And anyway.
Let's go Shark diving!

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