THE CONTROVERSY

Shark diving as a business has been evolving slowly over the past decades, maturing with every year. As with any industry, the initial trail blazers had to go through the ups and downs of being seen as crazy and dangerous while also stirring up interest and fascination. The public and state agencies have been weary of shark interactions. In some cases due to justified reasons, in most other cases due to a lack of knowledge and a lot of irrational fear of sharks and their potential behaviors. 

Diving used to be a sport that was undertaken by a handful of pioneers that would face true wilderness every time they entered the water. They had to accept that they were the weakest link and that they were lucky to be able to observe. That has drastically changed. Diving has been made available to a vast range of people, and with that, it has become a commercial business. While that comes with drawbacks, such as an expectation of guaranteed encounters, it has also created a market that makes use of a resource without depleting it. This is particularly evident in shark diving.

As with all industries, perfection is hard to find. Tourism has ruined many pristine locations. Greed never stops people from over exploiting a place. But with diving, the industry has a strong incentive to do the least damage possible, because when a dive site degrades, the business goes away. Shark diving is now at a point where inexperienced operators want to jump on the opportunity. The effect will be that customers have to be more discernible about who they choose to give their business to. There will always be good and bad players. There are always those who are in it for the right reasons and others that are exploiting the industry purely for the money or for self-promotion. But you can’t knock an industry that is mostly good for sharks because it hasn’t achieved perfection. The big hope is that the community eventually weeds out the good from the bad. In the end, what matters is that sharks are becoming increasingly valued and protected and that diving can rival extractive methods, such as shark fishing.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE MISCONCEPTIONS

“Sharks are going to get accustomed to people, and that’s a problem.”

There is a pervasive idea that more interaction with animals makes them dangerous, that sharks could get too comfortable with divers and then lose their apprehension to approach divers or may be more likely to attack swimmers. This is far from the truth. The most tricky sharks to be around are nervous or territorial sharks. When sharks calm down they ignore divers. The animals carry on with their business and don’t give divers much attention unless they end up being too annoying, too noisy or rude to the sharks. In areas where sharks are not used to divers, the animals can be very pushy at first, seeing you as competition or a potential prey item, something that needs to be checked out. The other extreme is that they get completely spooked and take off. Sharks are not staying away from people because there is a built in apprehension of humans that someday may go away. They are animals that live in the moment and that react strongly to the stimulus that makes sense in their world. 

How sharks react to someone that swims or surfs on the surface has very little to do with what divers do below, unless there is food and scent introduced in the water. This makes shark feeding dives more tricky to gauge. It is also a fact that should be considered when spearfishing or fishing from the beach. The sound, scents and commotion introduced by other boat traffic, fishing activities and too many operators in one area, can change the dynamics. Establishing a shark feeding type dive location in an area that is also used by paddlers, surfers and swimmers is probably not a good idea. But 3–4 miles out, away from surf breaks and bathers, or on remote reefs that are already dominated by sharks it’s a different story. Most shark species are extremely shy, and the noise from scuba gear will cause them to stay away. A bit of scent in the water is a way to get them close enough for viewing day after day. Is it the most pristine way to see sharks? No. But considering that sharks have become extremely rare to find, giving people the experience to meet sharks is the only way to realistically conduct shark diving as a commercial industry. Compare it to wild animal safaris in Africa, where watering holes are established to give people a nearly guaranteed chance to see the animals. Does shark feeding re-route where sharks are going? Only temporarily and within the same region they are naturally covering. The moment the attractive scent or sound is gone, sharks go back to what they were doing before the boat showed up. Studies have shown that throughout the year, sharks have not changed their migration patterns whether diving and feeding is in place or not. Even years of shark feeding in the Bahamas locations has not changed the way tiger sharks and hammerheads come and go seasonally. They are not dependent on humans for food. Also consider the fact that most areas that are used for diving have been used for fishing for many decades. So human impact has been present before a diver ever entered the water. Recreational and commercial fishing introduces a constant flow of scent, noise, chum and agitation that is most attractive to sharks. 

“Sharks are negatively impacting fishing.”

Some commercial and recreational fishermen claim that too many sharks are chasing after their catch and blame dive boats for luring sharks in. But does that make sense? Fishermen have been chumming the waters for decades and they drag lures and food through the water to attract animals. Why are they surprised that a predator would respond to that? Claims that there are now more sharks than ever chasing after boats are a sign of the imbalance that has been created. In some locations certain smaller sharks may be more plentiful now, because the larger sharks have been fished out. Another factor may be that sharks are now considered a nuisance because they are rare enough that people don’t consider them a natural sight anymore. When they see a few more sharks than they used to, the immediate conclusion is that the population must be increasing beyond what is considered “normal.” There are so many ways humans have affected the near shore waters that pointing at one element is convenient, but not very realistic. The bottom line is that our new normal is completely skewed. Look at some old underwater and fishing videos and you see reefs with hundreds if not thousands of sharks, along with other large predators. That is a thing of the past. And as our practices adjust, we have to make an allowance for imperfect solutions that give us results. And shark diving tourism is one of those solutions.