Large Great White caught from shore at Camp Pendleton

[Lan]

Originally Posted by mark46th

A 10 footer is probably a year or two old. In 1978, I saw a 23 footer a half mile off Corona del Mar State Beach. I was driving a 23 foot boat, the shark's head was at the bow, its tail was at the stern. Big fish...

Sdiver- There are a ton of great whites off the Farallon's. I wouldn't suggest diving with them. A friend of my friends family lost his head ab diving off the Northern California coast.

[Sdiver]

Originally Posted by Lan

Sdiver- There are a ton of great whites off the Farallon's. I wouldn't suggest diving with them. A friend of my friends family lost his head ab diving off the Northern California coast.

Interesting.

The only thing I found in searching about any diver losing their head to a GW while ab diving, was a diver down in Australia back in 2007, getting bit by a GW about the torso. His vest apparently saved him, as well as poking the GW in the eye to release him. It was estimated that it was a juvenile GW, around 10 foot long.

Do you have a link for the incident you mentioned. I'd really like to see it.

[Lan]

Originally Posted by Sdiver

Interesting.

The only thing I found in searching about any diver losing their head to a GW while ab diving, was a diver down in Australia back in 2007, getting bit by a GW about the torso. His vest apparently saved him, as well as poking the GW in the eye to release him. It was estimated that it was a juvenile GW, around 10 foot long.

Do you have a link for the incident you mentioned. I'd really like to see it.

"In 2004, a well-known diver in Mendocino County was decapitated by a shark in one swift attack. Though dozens of abalone hunters have died from other causes since, Randy Fry remains a name that Northern California divers speak with a tone of regret and unmistakable dread. Today, many divers, as well as kayakers and surfers, wear “Shark Shields,” a relatively new device that emits an electric field that may deter sharks as large as great whites."



Article

Most likely a great white given the area, and the fact that it took his head off.

[Sdiver]

Originally Posted by Lan

"In 2004, a well-known diver in Mendocino County was decapitated by a shark in one swift attack. Though dozens of abalone hunters have died from other causes since, Randy Fry remains a name that Northern California divers speak with a tone of regret and unmistakable dread. Today, many divers, as well as kayakers and surfers, wear “Shark Shields,” a relatively new device that emits an electric field that may deter sharks as large as great whites."



Article

Most likely a great white given the area, and the fact that it took his head off.

Interesting.

From the articles that I read, it sounds like Mr. Fry was at the surface and the GW hit him from beneath, kind of like when they hit a seal or sea lion.

That's not really "diving" with them as I was implying. That was just a tragic encounter. Sorry about your friends friend.

It won't stop my dream of diving with one, or more.

[Lan]

I should've said:

"I wouldn't dive with them" rather than:

"I wouldn't suggest diving with them"

That was a poor choice of words so I apologize! I didn't mean to come off like that.

[mojaveman]

You're a brave man Sdiver. If these people can do it then I guess you can too. Not this cowboy.

[MR2]

From The Economist 409.8866 (Dec13)

He’s behind you!
Some sharks know how to stay out of sight of nearby people

HUMAN beings like to believe they are at the top of the food chain. When something else eats one it is not only upsetting to the victim’s friends and relatives, it also seems slightly improper-a reversal of the natural order of things. Such attacks are thus often portrayed as aberrations from predators’ normal behaviour. In the case of sharks, for example, the sh are assumed to have mistaken human swimmers for seals or turtles. But Erich Ritter, of the Shark Research Institute, an American charitable foundation, begs to dier. He thinks sharks know exactly what they are doing when they attack people, and he believes he has the data to prove it.

Anecdotal evidence suggests sharks generally take swimmers from behind. This would make sense from the shark’s point of view, since its approach would not be detected. But it does depend on its knowing what
behind means when applied to such an oddly shaped creature as a human. And if that is the case it implies there is no mistake in the animal’s mind about what its target is.

To test this idea Dr Ritter did an experiment, the results of which have just been published in Animal Cognition. He asked some scuba divers to kneel, for a total of an hour a day each, on the seabed at a site in the Bahamas frequented by reef sharks. Since the divers were stationary, their direction of travel could not give away which
part of them was the front, and since they were kneeling their body shapes were about as un-seal-like or un-turtle-like as it is possible for a person to be.

Some divers knelt alone. Others, acting as controls, knelt back to back, in pairs. A camera at the surface, 12 metres above them, then recorded what happened.

Altogether, when they looked at the footage, Dr Ritter and his statistician colleague Raid Amin, of the University of West Florida, were able to analyse 312 encounters between sharks and divers. When a single diver was present (211 of the encounters), any approaching shark passed behind him four-fths of the time, and in front only one-fth. When there were two divers (the remaining 101), the sharks had no preference about what they did. They did not, of course, have the choice of going behind both divers’ backs. But there was nothing, either in the area or in the divers’ subliminal behaviour, that caused them to go one way round the pair rather than the other.

Reef sharks rarely attack divers, and this experiment is not proof-positive that those species which do would behave in the same way. But it does show that some sharks, at least, know perfectly well which part of a human being is the front and which, if they wish to remain undetected, is the back.

[Guymullins]

Originally Posted by Lan

I should've said:

"I wouldn't dive with them" rather than:

"I wouldn't suggest diving with them"

That was a poor choice of words so I apologize! I didn't mean to come off like that.

My son did it last year, but from inside a cage, so I suppose that doesn't count. False Bay, near Cape Town. Lots of Great Whites there (no jokes about Apartheid now).

[Lan]

Originally Posted by Guymullins

My son did it last year, but from inside a cage, so I suppose that doesn't count. False Bay, near Cape Town. Lots of Great Whites there

That's awesome! There's a company who offers cage diving 'adventures' out of San Fransisco. They ferry you out to the Farralon's. Lots of great whites off South Africa!

Originally Posted by Guymullins

(no jokes about Apartheid now).

lol That's hilarious. Nice cross thread comedy there