Wild Discovery Guides ®
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Wild Discovery Guides ® Mr Ian McKinnon 25 November 2012 Managing Director SCUBAWORLD Mooloolabah Dear Ian, Re: Sharks and SCUBA divers in Queensland waters I have SCUBA dived more than 2000 times, logged several hundred hours on SSBA and thousands of hours snorkelling and manta-towing the entire length and breadth of the Great Barier Reef and all the offshore Coral Sea Territory reefs during my professional life as a biologist/ecologist of more than 40 years. During that time I have never been in any danger from sharks and have not been aware of any divers being the victim of a shark incident – note they are not attacks as the media would have us believe. My first diving in Queensland was in 1969 at Heron Island where they used to drop the resort and Research Station garbage about 750m offshore westwards and near the world famous Heron Island Bommie dive site. This practice continued until the mid 1980s. Each dump brought in about 10 big sharks – 2.5-4m – usually Tigers and whalers of mixed species which I went out and photographed from the surface just before the practice finished. I dived all around that area as part of my work with the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Queensland Marine Parks from 1978–87. During the earlier years we never saw any sizable sharks while diving (nor snorkelling which included manta-towing on snorkle around all the reefs of the Capricorn Bunkers in 1978-9). My records show one spotting of a Tiger Shark at about 15m below a manta-tower on the back of Masthead Reef and several sightings of larger sharks from the helicopter to and from Heron and Gladstone. In later years I have seen no sizeable sharks in the area except when we chummed up about ten sharks for a documentary we did for Channel Nine in 1988 and we were hand feeding them for the cameras but they never posed any danger for us. On one occasion in 1980 at Heron Island I and two divers and I was training in the manta-tow technique went out in an aluminium dinghy and same sized outboard as the garbage barge. Upon entering the water two large sharks rushed towards us but when they got to about 3m away they turned and left – we weren’t their normal fare – garbage! I am not aware of any SCUBA diver ever being injured in any shark incident in the waters off the Queensland coast bar one. If you read Ron & Valerie Taylor’s book The Great Shark Suit Experiment it tells how they developed a chain mail suit of armour for Valerie and Ron was to film her as sharks were attracted in to feed on a fish Valerie would dangle over her arm and wriggle it as bait then pull it away and replace it with her arm as the shark arrived to take the fish. They had no success anywhere in the Capricron Bunker Group and went out to the Swain Reefs and tried there. Again they had no success with the sharks until one Silver Tip rushed in and bit Valerie on the head (she still has part of its tooth in her lower jaw!). Ron had it all on film. They packed their bags and went to the USA off the California coast and using Blue Sharks were able to get the footage they wanted. By this time, due to its weight, Valerie had stopped wearing the pants part of the suit and was bitten on the leg by one of the sharks and my understanding is that she was dangling several fish in a bag down near her leg as she Len Zell T/A Wild Discovery Guides ® ARBN 97963696 ABN 34 992 690 127 PO Box 280 Ashgrove QLD 4060 Australia ph 0407 456 288 [email protected] www.lenzell.com www.wilddiscovery.com.au Wild Discovery Guides ® wriggled the bait one over her arm. The shark was after the fish and got her leg by mistake – they made a short documentary on it should you wish to chase it up. Sharks, by nature, are not attracted to humans. If they were every time any human entered the water they wou ld be attacked and eaten due to the shark’s ability to detect prey in the water . All the shark incidents one hears about are easily explained as the person was usually spear - fishing and the shark injury resulted from the shark attempting to get the speared fish dangling on the spearo’s string line. Bull shark s which are relatively common, as shown by a recent study, in many of our coastal rivers and canal estates are often invo lved in incidents where a swimm er will be bumped several times before being bitten – normal territorial behaviour for a breeding bull shark and they are not interested in eating humans. Further south where Great Whites occur (keep in mind their numbers a re far less now than what they were when many Australians were first surfing our entire coastline daily and now that number of surfers has increased enormously ) there is an occasional shark incident where a Great White mistakes a human as a seal or similar , does a taste test, and spits the person out – sadly usually severely injured and often dead. I am one of the many fortunate and well-informed individuals who argue strongly against the Shark-netting and Drum lines program run by the Queensland Gover nment – this is easily proved as environmental vandalism due to the by -catch caught including whales, dolphins, dugong and sea-turtles. I sti ll do not understa nd why it is maintained as it has no statistical evidence to prove it works. Since the program ha s been running for more that 45 years and in that time there has been only one fatal incident on North Stradbroke Island on the west coast inside Moreton Bay one has to say again – why? I suspect th e fatal incident a territorial bull shark in the breeding season was the culprit. In addition the depletion of shark species world - wide should be sufficient reason to cease this usele ss activity as a matter of urgency. For any person to sugge st that SCUBA diving places peo ple at risk from a shark incident indicates a severe lack of un derstanding of the facts . One could quote statistics forever on the greater risk in getting to the dive site by car and boat as being a far greater risk and we are talking an order of magn itude in risk here! Yours in diving, Len Zell BSc, MSc (Qualifying), CDE, Cert IV WAT, PADI Divemaster, Commercial Diver (Level 2 Restricted) Len Zell T/A Wild Discovery Guides ® ARBN 97963696 ABN 34 992 690 127 PO Box 280 Ashgrove QLD 4060 Australia ph 0407 456 288 [email protected] www.lenzell.com www.wilddiscovery.com.au .