Red Sea Jaws CH5 20.00pm-21.00pm Tuesday 25/1/2011

i can't stand C5 documentaries - they're nearly always a load of hysteria-fueled rubbish or poor copies of documentaries by other channels.  At least two species were involved in the attack so there is no need to worry about one shark being responsible - and there is no evidence that individal sharks do become man-eaters anyway.  Attacks are rare, fatal ones even rarer and cases where the person is then consumed afterwards rarer still.  Oceanic Whitetips are known to be scavangers - people can swim with them with some degree of safety but due to their nature they can become very exciteable when food is around and that is when they are most likely to try taking a bite out of anything as they are used to travelling for miles to get a meal.  It is most likely that illegal dumping of carcasses in the water was ultimately behind the behaviour - a human-caused problem but it is the sharks that end up paying the price for it.

There is also very little evidence that feeding of sharks leads to attacking (though I personally don't agree with it for other reasons).  Sharks (usually grey reef but also bull sharks) are routinely fed in the Bahamas and there is no increase in unprovoked attacks in the area despite the number of swimmers in the area.  In South Africa great whites are often baited but again this hasn't led to any increase in attacks, a few happen but no where near as many as there would be expected if sharks associated people with food.  Sharks attack numbers are fairly stable with about 100 attacks a year, though as many as half of these are provoked and are related far more to the number of people going in the water than anything else though environmental changes can cause a localised increase - which was what happened in Brazil (if I remember rightly) where development altered the way the water from a river flowed and unfortunately for the swimmers, the flow then went passed a fish processing plant to the swimming beach.  Sounds quite similar to the cases in Egypt doesn't it?

Hi Kathy & KatTai

The experts established that the mako that they caught was responsible for one of the attacks, because of it's unusual tooth pattern, which matched the bite on the victim.

They also established that a white-tip was responsible for the other attacks, and that one particular white-tip, with a notch out of it's tail fin, had been filmed in the vicinity at each of the other attacks, but that it wasn't the one they had caught.

As at the end of the documentary the white-tip shark that was responsible for the attacks hadn't been caught, and it was put forward that there was a likelihood that it had become habituated to being fed in that vicinity. The other factor mentioned was that it was unusual for oceanic sharks to come into the area, and almost unheard of for one shark to take three bites out of any human. Something must have caused this particular shark to attack four different humans and to not only bite them, but to bite each one of them more than once.

The baiting part of the conclusion was drawn by the fact that all of the victims had been bitten on the hand, and either the buttocks or the leg. The divers fed the sharks by giving them a fish from their hand and then taking another one out of their packs on their buttocks or thighs.

Whether that white-tip is habituated to being fed or not, it didn't act like any of the other white-tips that have been seen in the area.

I always wanted to go diving for my PADI certificate in the Red Sea at Sharm el Sheikh, but even if I didn't feel too old to do it now, I don't think I would rush out there at the first opportunity. :-)

Just because a shark was filmed in the vacinty doesn't necessarily mean that is the one responsible though - they caught several sharks in the area afterall so how can they know whether they got the shark or not!  They don't know only one shark was responsible, an unusual number of sharks were in the vacinity at the time so any one or several could have been responsible.  Hands are actually one of the most frequent locations for bites - because these are often the things flailing around in the water that attract the sharks attention (and some people like wearing shiny jewelry and watches around their wrists which is also known to attract the attention of sharks) and obviously people tend to put their hands out when something approaches them they don't want coming too close, not to mention that's what some people find amusing to grab at sharks with.  As I said earlier oceanic whitetips are opportunistic, once they get into feeding mode it is very difficult to get them away from it,  professional divers are usually quick to leave the water in these circumstances because once in feeding mode they become very unpredictable and dangerous.  Unlike sharks such as great whites, oceanic white tips aren't choosy.  They've even been known to try and take bites out of coconuts (and they seem to like quavers!).  They are simply looking to place blame - if hand feeding is responsible why now?  Why not shortly after feeding the sharks started?  Why not in the Bahamas where it has been going on for decades?  While I don't agree with it, I see no evidence that feeding of sharks leads to attacks nor to I see any evidence in these cases. 

I watched the programme. Still found it very dramatised but like I mentioned beforehand this is Five TV :)

Anyhow -  the fish feeding was interesting as fish are food for sharks and the more food items that are availiable the increase in predators.

I am sorry but I am not a shark behaviour expert, and I never suggested I knew anything about shark behaviour so I'm not expressing any knowledgeable views about sharks.

I merely posted details of the facts as they were stated by the group of experts in the documentary.  I expressed no opinion apart from the fact that I wouldn't hurry to swim in that area.

After their investigations the experts concluded that two different sharks were responsible for the attacks from the tooth marks on the victims.

The facts were they caught one innocent white-tip plus the mako shark that had bitten the male victim, and they know that the rest of the bites all came from the same white-tip shark. The other victims had the same tooth pattern bite marks, so they were able to establish that the bites all came from one white-tip shark. That shark hadn't been caught at the end of the documentary.

I don't like the way this thread is starting to become aggressive and argumentative towards me and I won't be posting on it again.

I apologise if I have upset you Chris, I haven't  intended to do anything of the sort.  I have been rather interested in sharks for a long time and have done a lot of studying about them in my free time over the years.  Nothing I have said has been argumentative or agressive that I am aware of, I have simply posted what I know and what similarities lie with other attacks they have been in the past.  I didn't realise you were simply saying what you heard on the programme, but I was giving my arguments against what they were saying.

Oh, and in response to the reply before, make sharks are actually warm-blooded (same as great white sharks).  They have a internal system that allows them to keep their body temperature higher than the surrounding water so water temperature doesn't matter as much to them as they can create their own internal heat (this is what enables them to catch prey in colder waters such as around the UK :-)

Hi there

Just the say that there is another chance to see this same programme on today 12.15pm -13.15pm CH5

It is available on Demand Five now on the link on post one on this thread

Regards

Kathy and Dave