Dr. George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File, disagrees with this view and does not see a difference between chumming and feeding sharks because whether it’s scent or chum, sharks react primarily to olfactory signals. To prove his point, he cited the case of Markus Groh, an Austrian diver who died from a shark bite on one of Abernethy’s dives in the Bahamas in 2008. Groh’s ‘chum bag’ was said to have been grabbed by a shark: ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s called “chum”, a “chumbag” or food, the animals go after it,’ says Dr. Burgess. ‘It’s the equivalent of going to Africa, where a pride of lions are hanging out under a tree and dumping a bunch of T-bone steaks on the ground. That would be called dumb if you did it with lions, alligators or bears, so why do we think we can do it with the largest and most efficient predators in the ocean?’ Burgess believes the dive industry tries to keep shark attacks quiet: ‘Most of the cases we have on the International Shark Attack File are leaked to us. These operations are out there to make money. That’s not a sin – they’re trying to offer something one step above the average for people looking for thrills and the unusual. I suspect that a lot of the clients who come to these things are less naturalist-divers than people who want to be entertained.’
Simon Rogerson, editor of Dive magazine, agrees: ‘If you were to suggest deliberately putting fishy blood and bait in the water in other countries, you’d be politely laughed off the boat.’ Indeed, the practice is virtually training these creatures to expect food from outstretched human arms. Sometimes sharks become so conditioned to the arrival of dive boats that just the sound of an engine revving up is the equivalent of a dinner bell. Video evidence of the practice with a diver feeding fish to an Oceanic Whitetip in the Red Sea was shown to the investigating team. ‘They hold the fish in their hand and as the shark gets very close, they would release the fish and the shark would chomp down and swim behind them. At that point the diver would reach out behind and pull out another fish from his pack. Over a given length of time, sharks become habituated to it – just as your family pet would, if you were teaching it new tricks. That’s why the animal has such determined behaviour around people. It is looking for something and if it doesn’t receive it, there is a high probability that you will be bitten,’ explains Ralph Collier of the Shark Research Committee.
Indeed the practice could have been going on in Sharm El Sheikh’s waters for over a year and Collier believes that a shark trained to take fish from a diver may have approached some of its victims, thinking they had food. ‘The first reaction a human has, of course, is to fend off and at that point the victims stretch out a hand and the shark bits it off, thinking it was a fish,’ adds Collier. Red Sea rescue diver Hossam El-Hamalawy agrees: ‘This should be a reminder that the ocean is the shark’s natural habitat and that we are visitors there. When we begin messing with the inhabitants’ behavioural patterns, when we begin messing with their environment, then the consequences can be serious. I’m surprised the government has just woken up and discovered this overnight – the problem of the tourist industry damaging the ecology of the Red Sea has been going on for three decades and yet nothing has been done about it.’
This would go a long way to explaining the abnormal frenzied attacks by the sharks – ceaselessly biting at humans rather than the usual one investigative bite before swimming off in search of more suitable prey. Three of the five Red Sea victims were bitten over and over. ‘Most of the time a shark bites a human once to figure out what it could be. To bite multiple times is very, very rare but we realised that all the bites seemed to be in the same area of the body – hands, legs and buttocks,’ says Collier. ‘It is not unusual for a limb to be bitten by a shark because generally that is the easiest thing for the animal to grab when it comes up to investigate. However, it is highly unusual for the victims to sustain wounds both to the hands and the buttocks area by the same shark.’
The most shocking aspect of the shark-feeding video was that the creature involved was the killer female Oceanic Whitetip and the explanation would go some way towards explaining its highly unusual, continuous attack on Renate Sieffert. Biologist Dr. Bojanowski adds: ‘None of the bites looked like a test bite checking for something to eat; it looked more like the female shark was feeding and had somehow crossed the line of not identifying people as a food source.’
Simon Rogerson agrees with this view: ‘I’ve heard reports of these approaches getting more and more aggressive. I think the thing is that the longer you spend in the water with this particular shark, the bolder it gets, and the more it tries to test you. To most sharks, human beings aren’t edible and I’ve no idea whether an Oceanic Whitetip could thrive off a human but these sharks have got a history of being a danger to people who are in the water for a long, long time.’ Rogerson believes scuba divers are at less risk than snorkellers, though: ‘Divers have more control, and more awareness, of what’s around them. Also, in nature, if something’s floating on the surface, it looks as if it’s injured so it becomes more of a target. These attacks have been happening to snorkellers who are just pootling off resort beaches and the chances are they’re not wearing wetsuits. There’s all that white flesh and that seems to attract sharks – it’s the colour of fish flesh, after all. Most sharks like to sneak up on their prey – they don’t like being seen – and that’s easier if someone’s snorkelling.’ Of the attack on Renate Sieffert, shark behaviourist Erich Ritter adds: ‘In a way it was if the shark had an agenda. It was not exploration, it was not a defensive wound – it just really went after her.’
Another theory came from the CDWS’s Hisham Gabr. He blamed Australian live sheep exporters, passing through on their way to the Suez Canal and throwing any dead sheep into the sea. ‘I know for a fact that sheep have been thrown into the water by a boat,’ said Gabr. ‘I don’t know the quantities, I don’t know the numbers and I know it was more than once because divers saw it. They saw the sheep thrown into the water and there was a ship passing by, carrying sheep in the Gulf of Aqaba, passing through the Straits of Tiran.’ Dr. Bojanowski adds: ‘Oceanic Whitetip sharks have a very widespread interest in different food items and carcasses of different kinds. If carcasses are being dumped and are drifting to the shore this will have a great effect on the movement and distribution of the shark, which is a known scavenger.’
This was all disputed by Australian meat and livestock export manager Peter Dundon. He said that although dead sheep were thrown overboard, maritime law forbids this in the narrow waterway near Sharm El Sheikh, and added: ‘To my knowledge, there’s been no Australian livestock vessel through there in that period. There’s restriction of 100km [62 miles] for the closest land that whole dead sheep are not able to be disposed of. My experience on the vessels is that the master, who is responsible for that happening, enforces adherence to those international maritime laws very strictly.’
Over-fishing may have forced sharks closer to shore to find food. Warnings of this type of danger had already been aired as recently as August 2010 – just three months before the shark attacks began. The use of large nets has decimated the sea’s fish populations, as well as endangering coral reefs and other marine life. Mahmoud Hanafy, Red Sea governor, professor of marine biology at the University of Suez and environmental adviser to the Hurghada Environment Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA), is a leading figure in the process of halting the devastating effects of over-fishing. He said: ‘Sharks, turtles and marine mammals, including dolphins and dugongs, all fall prey to these acts of fishing.’ The practice also drives sea creatures such as sharks – attracted by the abundance of fish lured by regular feeding from holidaymakers – into shallow waters. Hanafy also points out how the average 20,000 tons of fish caught every year in the Red Sea is ‘far surpassing the recommended sustainable limit of between 900 and 1,500 tons.’
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