CNN has a video piece up right now examining the safety and legality of shark dives outside of shark cages. An Austrian tourist bled to death in the Bahamas after being bitten in the thigh by a bull shark during a scuba dive, surrounded by bloody bait.

CNN wants to know who would go in the water without a cage in the first place - well, lots of people, actually, this author included. The questions that have arisen about shark diving are valid, but are not about whether we should go in the water with sharks, but how we should go about it. Cage-free diving is not inherently dangerous - even the diving authority interviewed in the piece acknowledged that he runs cage-free dives himself, albeit with less aggressive species.

5 Tips for Safe Shark Diving

1) Pick sharks carefully - There are only a *COUPLE* species of shark that should be considered any real danger to a diver, and special precautions have to be taken around them. The Bahamian dive authorities asked that he cease the cage-free dives, especially around more dangerous sharks like bull and tiger sharks. Contrary to what Discovery Channel might make you think, bull sharks constitute the grand majority of shark attacks on humans worldwide. The bull shark is a highly-aggressive species that tends to favor murky conditions, and like all fish, once it’s brain registers a signal for food, it goes for it.

There are some people who still believe that you can dive safely with these species, but under much stricter conditions than were being practiced here…for instance:

2) Be cautious around “chumming” - the practice of filling the water with blood, guts, and fish parts to attract sharks to a dive site - is highly controversial and associated with a great many attacks on divers. It may still be more effective than the safer baits (bait-boxes, frozen bait balls, and whole fish) - but a skilled tour operator in a safe location can find the sharks without chumming, which in this day and age is just a cheap tactic.

3) No hand-feeding - if you’re willing to stick your hand into the mouth of a perfectly-evolved set of teeth, I think you’ve waived your right to complain about being bit. Leave this one to the experts.

4) Get training - there are some things, sorry America, that are NOT safe for every Average Joe, no matter how much money he might be able to throw at you. I hate to squash this little bit of the American dream, but there are some things that are not safe without training, even for tourists, who everyone knows are the most patient and responsible among us. It is the dive business’ duty to determine who can and cannot safely participate in an activity, profit-margins aside, and it’s up to the tourists to strongly consider their limits and know that you can’t do or be everything in a week.

5) Pick a safe tour operator - As I’ve already hinted, there are many different kinds of people involved in dive tourism, especially in the shark-dive business, and there are some I wouldn’t trust in a bathtub full of guppies. Do your research - one look at Google will tell you whether a tour operator has got a good reputation, a bad reputation, or no reputation, which can be the most dangerous of all.

That’s a sure sign not to get on the boat.

SOURCE: http://ww.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/03/01/candiotti.shark.debate.cnn

Technorati Tags: sharks, shark week, conservation, environment, jim abernathy, discovery channel

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