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22/06/2005: "HAND FEEDING SHARKS .....or feeding sharks your hands?"
Should sharks be fed by human divers? It's the only way to make sure they will be there on call. Florida and Hawaii have banned shark feeding over concerns the chum or burley and the other associated aspects, changes natural behaviour and creates serious side effects.
When a famed USA TV underwater stunt man (see cartoon) had his leg bitten off by a dangerous bull shark, all gloves were off for the cyber (and legal threat) battles which are continuing. There are tones of another McDonalds-type battle here between concerned consumers (divers) and large corporations (USA diver magazines, scuba certification agencies, and the shark 'circus', cage, feed operators).
Shark-feed entertainers as they have ben called are diver-celebrities who capitalise with shark encounters for a variety of reasons, not always in good taste. Diver magazines were called the whores of the industry for their one-side stand as they promote what is best for the advertisers.
Cyber space is the new battle-ground where anyone can voice opinions. Australia seems to have been spared negative publicity so far. But South Australians are not too happy with shark baiting off their coast.
Meanwhile the NSW Fisheries is considering a fee for all diving with a grey nurse shark in the ocean, with only scuba shop boats being allowed the honours. Private boats banned. A bit unfair. $20 was a suggested fee in a newspaper story this week in Sydney as the state fisheries tests reaction.
What happens if the divers don't see a shark? Or what if just one shark is sighted and it vacates promptly before everyone gets to see it? Refunds? Grey nurse are seasonal.
The question of grey nurse sharks being seriously endangered and the NSW sites gazetted as sanctuaries is also flawed. Research was grossly under-funded and the outcome favoured dive shops who supported the survey. The survey was otherwise simply too much work for the one man and an assistant who did the research. More money was needed.
One major NSW site known as a breeding area by fishermen was missed. Why? Because no commercial dive boat goes there. Proof that research was based upon information by dive boats. This was picked-up by the state fisheries department, with the rules now favouring the then average dive boat passenger sizes.
Some good has come from grey nurse shark protection which could not have been possible otherwise. In time the grey nurse would have possibly become endangered again - as they were in 1986 - then overnight hundreds re-appeared at both the Seal Rocks sites. Complete size variations from four meters down to two meters. I filmed them all on 16mm which is still in the can, and shows how a single diver decending into a formation can spook a school of twenty or more large sharks and cause them to flee. What can a boat load of 8 to 10 divers do?
Also then in 1986, an international film team arrived (unsucessfully searching for me to work with them) to document the vanishing grey nurse shark. When I found them by chance at Seal Rocks and told them before they dived and mentioned this new proliferation of sharks - it did not change the script. They had come to Australia to film vanishing sharks, full stop.
The real story should have been the return of the the grey nurse shark. It did not go to air as good news and stayed with the negative vanishing sharks theme as planned months before.
