Shark Diving Bimini, Bahamas at Bull Run

Martin Graf from Shark Diver is having an amazing month in Bimini, Bahamas getting to know the locals or Bull Sharks in the marina at the Bimini Big Game Club.

The Bimini Bull Run crew asked Martin to join us to help set up the world's first dockside shark diving operation because of his decades long experience with sharks in Mexico at Isla Guadalupe.

Bimini Bull Run is also a new film and tv hub site for all shark production needs while on Bimini. Our one day shark production site works in tandem with commercial shark diving operations and shark safety.

We take shark diving seriously at Bimini and always have. The team here at BBR have been working with sharks for the past decade in the Bahamas. We see sharks as they are, top predators, not playthings, not toys, and not a resource that we can abuse.

Sharks are wild animals, they are magnificent, and they must be treated with respect - always.

At Bimini Bull Run our goals were simple, bring the world of wild sharks to as many people as we could and hopefully they will come to understand these animals, their eco systems, and the wild places they live in as places we need to protect for future generations.

Let's go shark diving!

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Volkswagen Shark Week 2012 - The Engineering Team

The engineering side of the 2012 Volkswagen Shark Week Commercial came from the pairing of Florida based Greg "Moondog" Mooney and the absolutely metal genius of Andre who quickly picked up the nickname, "Metal-Angelo."

In the world of sight engineering there's no better crew and the results after 20 days of hard work speak for themselves.

These guys were the heart and soul of a completely revolutionary undersea vehicle.

The challenge for this particular vehicle, being a wet submersible, ran the gamut from propulsion systems which were provided by Silent Submersion to a complete made to order life support system that no one has ever seen before.

In short, this unique engineering crew designed, created, and launched the equivalent of an undersea moon shot in 20 days.

Here's the second teaser installment of the 2012 Volkswagen Commercial - enjoy:

 


About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Volkswagen and Sharks Bahamas - Video

As a lot of the industry knows we were AWOL for a month this year on another fun project with the entire A-Team in the Bahamas.

Exactly what that project entailed was the subject of much speculation.

You can stop speculating. Or begin a fresh round as the first in a series of anchor commercials for the 25th Anniversary of Shark Week has officially aired.

It's more of a teaser really, but here it is.

Enjoy:

About Shark Diver. As a global leader in commercial shark diving and conservation initiatives Shark Diver has spent the past decade engaged for sharks around the world. Our blog highlights all aspects of both of these dynamic and shifting worlds. You can reach us directly at sharkcrew@gmail.com.

Shark Feeding – The Debate Continues

Another blog post making the rounds on the Internet discusses "shark feeding" - once again.

While the conversation about chumming and habituating sharks is a perennial favourite, clearly more study needs to be done with operators enabling research at sites where sharks, people, and chumming occur.

Shane Pinder Blog

This is a continuation of the topic of shark feeding dives started in an earlier post.

Scuba Diving Forum posted a comment to that post that included a link to a very interesting article on the Shark Foundation site about a study on the impact on white shark cage diving.

The study concluded that chumming for white sharks does not condition or habituate them because the sharks don’t receive any food in the chumming process.

I wonder though if the research on white shark cage diving applies to the type of shark feeding done in the Bahamas and other parts of the Caribbean.

The conclusion that white shark cage diving does not result in the conditioning of white sharks to associate humans with food seems to hinge on the fact that white sharks are not fed during cage dives. The water is chummed with blood to attract them and the food on bait line is pulled away from them so that they never actually get a reward.

This is not what happens on shark dives in The Bahamas. The sharks do receive a reward (food). The article does refer to conditioning of three shark species in captivity -

“Conditioning has been demonstrated in a captive situation in the lemon shark, Negaprion brevirostris (Clark 1959, Wright & Jackson 1964), nurse shark, Ginglymostoma cirratum (Aronson et al. 1967) and the bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas (Wright & Jackson 1964). ”

These species are all present in Bahamian waters.

The article also discusses the demonstrated learning ability of Tiger sharks (also present in Bahamian waters) - “The learning ability of sharks is also demonstrated under natural conditions. For two weeks a year in June off the shallows of Hawaii, tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) congregate to feed on young albatross that take land on the waters surface whilst learning to fly (Martin 2003). Although the sharks initially have very little success in preying on the chicks, within 3-5 days they learn the technique needed to successfully capture the young birds and, on missing a prey item, to swim a short distance upwind to where the panicked bird will land (Martin 2003).”

The question is still whether or not the type of shark dives which involve sharks obtaining a reward (food) condition sharks to associate humans with food.

If these dives do create conditioning, does it follow that sharks are then more likely to attack humans in areas where they have been conditioned to associate humans with food?

From personal experience, I know that there are dives sites close to shark feeding sites where you can expect to see sharks even though no feeding is going on. In my experience, while the sharks at these sites have not been aggressive, they certainly hang around during the entire dive. They don’t appear to be bothered by such close contact to humans.

On dive sites that are not close to shark feeding sites, it is unusual to see any sharks. If you do happen to see a shark, it is usually only a glimpse of it as it cruising by in the distance. It doesn’t hang around.

Have a look at the article posted by Scuba Diving Forum about the study done by the Shark Foundation. What are your thoughts?

• Does this study help to confirm that shark dives in which sharks get food do not condition sharks to associate food with humans?

• Do you think that shark dives that result in sharks being fed condition sharks to associate food with humans?

• If sharks are conditioned by these types of dives to associate food with humans, does that make it more likely that shark attacks will occur?

GEERG Shark Cage in Montreal

Hard not to like these guys with a name like GEERG. If you happen to be in Montreal (our all time favorite city) drop by:

The GEERG anti-shark cage will be in Montreal and scuba divers will have a chance to experience the feeling of being in the cage.

The GEERG cage will be at Total Diving’s annual picnic at Kahnawake Quarry on June 20, 2009. Scuba divers will be invited to go in and get an idea of what’s it’s like to observe sharks from behind bars.

This cage will be used, later this Summer, for a National Geographic documentary on the Greenland shark.

GEERG is the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group. It’s mission is to study the Greenland shark and other Canadian shark species in their natural environment. GEERG Director Jeffrey Gallant will be with us on June 20 to answer all of your questions. Jeffrey is also the Executive-at-Large of the Canadian Association for Underwater Science.

Total Diving is a scuba diving school in Montreal, QC, Canada.

Total Diving’s annual scuba diving picnic, is a family event to celebrate the beginning of the 2009 diving season in Montreal. During this event, divers have a chance to try all kind of underwater toys at no charge, with a Total Diving dive professional on site to help them. For instance, besides the GEERG shark cage, there will be a complete underwater communication system with full face masks for 2 divers and a surface station, a vehicle recovery system, a hybrid between a dive mask and a dive computer, and a whole lot of gear from Atomic and Bare.

This year’s picnic will be held at the Kahnawake Quarry on the Southshore of Montreal. This quarry is just, now, being re-opened to scuba divers.

Neptune's Chariot - Mobile Shark Cage

Hold all our calls and take the kids out of school, we think we just came across something pretty unique.

For the past 30 years shark cage systems have been, for the most part, static. A big industry breakthrough happened a few years back with a clear cylindrical cage system in South Africa.

Unfortunately the material cost of cage systems like these makes the advancement of shark human interactions with cages a basic proposition...until today.

Welcome to Neptune's Chariot one mans dream for closer, mobile encounters, with the world's sharks:

I am presenting Neptune's Chariot, a high performance mobile shark cage. This chariot is designed to provide protection from some predatory animals, but also designed to allow a human to peddle efficiently through the water. The cage gives its occupant the piece of mind to swim out over the ledge, taking the creep out of the deep. Sharks can be enjoyed instead of feared, but always respected from the inside of Neptune's Chariot.

We like it, kudos to inventor Stephan Logie for looking at our industry and shark interactions in a new way.

When Disaster Videos Go Viral-Tracking The Spread

We have been tracking the spread of one of the worst cage breach videos ever to be caught on tape. The event happened at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico in 2007 and was posted on You Tube shortly after waiting for an editor or producer to take it mainstream.

That happened on Monday when the Times Online covered the video. What happened next is a classic case of viral negative media.

Today we'll be looking through the media lens on this event to highlight how far this video has spread-estimating the number of people who have been impacted.

Negative operational events (NOE's) affect the entire shark diving industry and ripple through the global media like wildfire. This is one example of how poor media handling immediately after an event has lead to the current negative media storm. Sadly, in the end, the sharks are the real victims here once again portrayed as 70's iconic, vicious killers.

Today is Wednesday December 10.2008-72 hours after the initial story broke in the U.K

International Newspapers

1. Times Online readership 618,160
2. Telegraph U.K readership 882,413
3. The Sun readership 7,900,000
4. Courier Mail Au 224,689

US Coverage

1. Today Show NBC-USA viewers 4,910,000
2. Today Show NBC-USA viewers 4,910,000 (second show Dec 11)
3. CBS Evening News-USA viewers n/a
4. ABC Good Morning America viewers 5,656,000

Major Viral Video Sites

1. You Tube 1 views 683,140
2. You Tube 2 views 149,541
3. You Tube 3 views 15,419
4. Break.com views 291,877
5. Travelistic.com views 27,160

Blogs

A quick blog search shows this video on well over 400 blogs and video posts at this time. Estimated numbers of viewers is hard to count.

Summary

The coverage of this video by the mainstream media will burn out by the end of this week. The driving force behind this video's success has been CNN's Planet in Peril and a recent expose on cage diving in South Africa. The story will not end here. This video will now sit on literally thousands of servers across the planet with absolutely no chance of it being taken down.

"Post spin" after a negative operational event (NOE) is not effective. Viewers of this video make up their own minds based on the negative media in front of them and will continue to carry that view. The real tragedy here is the animal which was put into an "artificial situation" driving both the anti shark diving agenda, and the negative image of sharks.

Operators have a small window immediately after an event like this to control media should they choose to exercise this option. Failing to do so, as we have seen this week, damages everyone.

Sharks and Media 101

This mornings Times Online highlights the ongoing need for both control of media within a shark site and safety protocols with macro sharks. Back in 2007 this company had another full cage breach at Isla Guadalupe. This time the shark took off the entire front of the cage system dumping a fully weighted diver into 500 feet of water.

At the time the event was written off and to this day the operation publicly looks at this event as "par for the course" when dealing with Great Whites. Meanwhile the video of the cage breach continues to grow on You Tube (500,000) garnering interest far and wide from not just the media, but government agencies in Mexico tasked with this sites enforcement, members of the Mexican Parliament, and a few NGO's whose agenda is clearly anti shark diving.

The lessons here are simple and two fold. Design and adhere to safer protocols for macro species encounters that do not rely on cage systems for "entertainment". Having white sharks bump, ram, or hit shark cages is both a disservice to the animals and inherently dangerous. Always control your media. When events like these happen there is a small window in which the operator may ask for the video or images. Videos such as these damage the credibility of all shark diving operations worldwide.

As an industry we live in a world where negative operations events (NOE's) are transmitted at light speed around the planet. These events will also sit on servers until the end of time reinforcing the image of sharks as deadly killers and no amount of post event spin will change that. As an industry whose livelihood depends on these animals, we can do better. Let's start by taking this video down and replacing it with a pro shark PSA, while at the same time ensuring these kind of events never happen again. The Times Online readership is 349,000 a day.

Editors Note: We just noticed the Sun also ran with the same story with a "Divers survive shark attack" headline. Good for sharks? Probably not.

Famous Shark Cage To Be Unveiled At Aquarium Sunday

The One, The Only, cage that started it all "Blue Water-White Death". A classic film for sharky types is now on display...just in time for Shark Week. If we had a bigger office we would buy it...heck if we were ever in the office:

Even in print, the flashback to the summer of 1975 and the blockbuster movie, “Jaws” gets the heart racing. For some, either Peter Benchley’s novel or Stephen Spielberg’s film are the reason they won’t get in the water more than three decades later.

There may be no other creatures in the animal world more feared and more misunderstood than sharks. Visitors at the Tennessee Aquarium get an up close view of the powerful bodies, strong and tooth-filled jaws of sandbar and sand tiger sharks in the Secret Reef.