Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bulsajo]

You'll spend all that money on a big cage dive adventure and end up using up all your air in your first 10 minutes in the cage. Bon voyage.

Night spearfishing. or surfing. cheaper. closer!

[n3ptne]

I'm a quick learner.

And luckily for me it wil be a week long expedition that includes as much cage diving as I want. Bon voyage.

[Bulsajo]

Well then, more power to you. But I pity the guys who will be responsible for watching out for you, newb.

[whitebeagle]

[n3ptne]

Newb is a state of mind, and I've never been one.

I've done all my homework for doing it and been in contact with the people I'll be doing it with for over a year and a half.

The diving is a fringe benefit, I'm exclusively going just to watch them breach.

But you're right, it is more power to me, because its my money and my life, not yours.

If I were you I'd have laid down on a set of rusty train tracks as soon as I was old enough to read a schedule. And if you weren't me you wouldn't go to Africa, its cool, all gravy baby, cest la vie. Now piss off.

[polarbearbrad]

Gentlemen can we take this somewhere else please?

The topic at hand is shark attacks which are rare in any waters. The reason they seem so frequent is because they make the news. Just like airplanes, you never see the headline: "All planes landed safely today." Bad news is hot news.

Now as for the unreported attacks, it would seem that there are more attacks that go unreported than we first thought. I see no reason for the student to lie to me as she knows I am NOT going diving or surfing or swimming in the ocean at night so no worries to me.

Figure that there are more attacks than we really know about given the fact that as we invade THEIR habitat more incidents are going to occur and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

It would not surprise me if the REAL attack rate was five or six times the reported number.
PBB

[jacktar]

[Bulsajo]

[JLarter]

You know what actually counts as a shark attack?
If a shark brushes your skin, that counts as an attack. If a diver touches a shark, it counts as an attack. Most attacks aren't even bites, and of those, only 10% kill you.
More people have died by eating shark meat than by sharks eating humans
Did you know, large male sharks can contain 40 to 50 litres of seminal fluid?

[Bulsajo]

[merlot]

Having well over 300 logged dives (mostly in Florida) I can tell you I've had many encounters with sharks. It's exciting to see them and after a while you hope you do.

The big bulls are scary. The hammerheads are beautiful. The nurses are everywhere and like big catfish. I had to bump one with the butt of my spear gun one time that was becoming a little too curious but they mainly have no interest unless there's blood in thr water. I always trail my speared fish on a line behind me so as not to get in between an agressive shark and its natural prey.

But the barracuda, now they're a different story all together. I've had to fight them for fish I've speard and I have some large ones run me out of their areas. I pay more attention to the cuda oftentimes than I do a few measley sharks. Barracuda is excellent white meat, by the way, just don't eat one longer than your arm or it could make you sick as the older ones pick up a reef toxin.

[polarbearbrad]

There are way more sharks in the water than what you imply sir, BUT there are far fewer than what there SHOULD be because man has hunted and killed them indiscriminently. I agree they are not circling just waiting for man to fall into the water. They would starve to death or they would come to where we are. Truth is we are just not that interesting to them. They attack us when we are mistaken for a seal or a fish, if we are bleeding which draws them in, or if we provoke them. Just like if you provoke the family dog, he is going to bite to protect himself.

No doubt that more people have been killed eating them than by them eating us.

Us bumping them should not be considered an attack, that should be considered us being idiots and not leaving them alone. Indeed how many non-caged shark dives have there been where no one got hurt in any way? Probably thousands a year. Once again bad news makes news. I have also read that a greater concern to divers/swimmers is barracudas and jellyfish.

I guess when it comes to dealing with any animal common sense (which often does not appear to be that common) should rule the day. Don't bother them, they won't bother you.

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[jacktar]

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/statistics/statsw.htm

59 attacks worldwide last year of which only 4 were fatal. And yes, there are thousands and thousands of uncaged dives every year. I've participated in many and have never felt threatened.

[Bulsajo]

More people die from mosquito bites.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of over 150 dives (dive log not handy at the moment, and it's not much compared to some, I know) most of which have been in areas where you would expect ot see sharks such as the Red Sea, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, the Andaman Sea, and- except for nurse sharks-
the number of sharks I have seen while in the water I can count on one hand.
2 large hammerheads and some reef sharks.
I've never participated in anything billed as 'shark dive', although I've seen shark feedings from boats and shore.
Have seen plenty (upon plenty squared) of barracuda and nevered felt scared.

(Unless you're a marine biologist) Wanting to go on cage dives with Great Whites just strikes me as an immature, foolish, knobish sort of thrill seeking, kind of an underwater version of Timothy Treadwell.

[n3ptne]

The reasons shark attacks aren't often fatal is quite simple... sharks don't want to eat us and sharks are too intelligent to attack something that could possibly harm it.

If a shark, just about any of the large ones, wanted to kill an unprotected surfer/swimmer it would be no problem whatsoever for the shark.

Brushing up against a shark doesn't constitute an attack, an attack is quantified (to my knowledge for the international file) by a bite.

As for the article I found that said 5 fisherman had been attacked by Whites in Korea since 1981ish when only a single documented case is on the international file? I imagine it was never confirmed to be a White, and most probably wasn't.

But yeh, Shark attacks are pretty big news in modernized countries and as soon as they make the papers they make the file... except for countries like India where bull sharks are plentiful. They undoubtabely attack/kill far more people than the list reflects.

And Bulsajo... it isn't for the thrills, the danger (i really don't see it as being dangerous at all) or any of the other instances that strike you about it. I've been fascinated with sharks, paticularly the White, since I was very young and have read and watched everything in regards to them since that time. I want to dive with them because I want to see what I've studied for so many years and see what their behavior is like in person as opposed to in books. The White isn't an overt killing machine, it's rather docile compared to the Bull (for which you could pay me no amount of money to dive with) and I just want to check it out. Cest la vie.

Oh, and as for being able to count on one hand the number of sharks you saw on your dives... you can rest assured that there plenty of ones you didn't see... sharks are all over the place. There are some aerial photographs I saw of a FLA beach which was loaded with swimmers. The detail of the picture is so great that you can see almost as many sharks in the frame as there are people, and many of the sharks are inbetween swimmers, at times only a few feet from them. If they wanted to attack humans or saw us as prey the number of attacks in a year would increase ten fold, and I wager that most would result in death.