Shark Bait?

This is something I wrote last week (1 March 2008):

Last week a Markus Groh was bit by a bull shark while diving in the northern Bahamas. He died later, presumably from blood loss. But was it an attack? No.

Specific data as the exact movements of Groh, his fellow divers, and the surrounding sharks immediately preceding the bite has not yet been released. Consequently, the nature of the bite, whether it was provoked or unprovoked, remains speculation.

Such an event is a media bonanza. A rare, sensational experience that people who grew up watching Jaws will be excited to read about (and perhaps consequently buy a paper). But this one is extra special. This man was not just bobbing about in the shallows and chanced upon a shark, rather he was diving specifically to see sharks, the big ones, tiger sharks and hammer heads; and he wasn’t in a cage.

This behavior has led many to presume that Groh was asking for it. They are especially eager to highlight the detail that the water was chummed (bits of fish and blood scattered in the water) to attract the sharks. These people ask, “Why would anyone do something so obviously foolish as to tempt fate with a man-eating predator?”

The answer is simple: sharks don’t eat people. If the shark had been inclined to eat the diver, it would have done so. It’s bigger with nasty pointed teeth, and would easily win in a fight against a soft, unarmed, biped. Furthermore, the bite on Groh’s leg resulted in lacerations, not torn flesh. The most likely scenario is that the bite was a complete accident.

Groh was bit while on a dive with Jim Abernathy, who operates the M/V Shear Water, a “scuba adventures” company in the Bahamas. This particular tour is designed for photographers and shark enthusiasts to get up close to the sharks in a controlled setting. Abernathy has been operating these tours for almost a decade with no incident, and has personally dived with sharks for over twenty-five years, also without incident.

Sharks are wild animals, and as such cannot be controlled, but people can. There are stringent safety protocols (down to the color wet suit and other equipment permitted) and experienced shark divers accompany each group of novices to ensure that these protocols are not violated. Abernathy’s thus far spotless cage-free dive record attests to this system’s efficiency and effectiveness.

So what happened on that fateful February 24, 2008? The empirical facts reveal little: man dives with sharks, shark bites man, man dies. It is the cultural perceptions surrounding the animal that create truth for some, and distort it for others. Getting in a car and driving around the block is often cited as statistically more dangerous than a cage-free dive with sharks, as are many other every day scenarios that no one thinks twice about. The shark has become a monster in popular belief because people have created that image for it. That does not make it true.