Shark incident while aquarium diving

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  • Опубликовано: 23 авг 2012
  • TL;DR: A routine cleaning dive at one of the world's largest aquariums (Dubai Aquarium) turns into an abnormal encounter (starting at 5:03) with a couple of otherwise-docile sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus). My buddy ended up shutting down my camera as sharks are sensitive to electric signals.
    You'll notice that between the 5:03 and 5:10 mark, I look up from vacuuming the floor and focus instead on the shark eating a fish in the distance.
    This is VERY unusual given that the sharks are fed daily and their diet is carefully monitored. They normally have no interest in other fish, which are not part of their preferred diet.
    Such abnormally-aggressive behavior is the reason why I stopped cleaning and took out my "shark stick" (just a pointy plastic pipe, really) - the shark was approaching me straight on, and not in its usual pattern (each shark has its own "travel routine" in the aquarium, and this one was uncharacteristically breaking away from it). We don't get shark sticks out for no good reason - it's not a good show for the aquarium visitors to even suggest a confrontation with the animals.
    The shark's unusual behavior was confirmed to me at 5:14, 5:15 and 5:18 by the snapping of the jaws (again, small details like these you get to notice if you dive often with them). Then, the abnormally-close proximity of its first pass from the moment we make contact at 5:23.
    At this point, if the shark had just swam away, it would have been fine. However the dorsal kick at 5:34 to start circling me is a red flag, and potentially indicative of predatory behavior. The second pass at 5:51 is incredibly uncomfortable because it happens in a tight space, and the shark could feel trapped and react hostilely.
    That's what prompted my buddy (who was the Head of the aquarium operations, and extremely familiar with the tank and every individual shark in it) to join me and adopt a defensive stance with his own shark stick.
    After that, at 6:43, not only does the shark comes back for a third and then fourth pass, but a second shark joins in as well. This is an unhealthy buildup of tension and at this point, the right call was to abort the dive and clear the aquarium. It could have been fine perhaps, but safety is paramount and we didn't want to take chances, which was the professional thing to do.
    For those who don't understand how this is an incident, I am experienced enough (and my buddy even more so) to tell the difference between curious/petting behavior and unhealthy interest. Notice how I pet a zebra shark at 1:25 and 1:57, let a whipray brush against me at 3:58, etc. - all in good fun. Likewise, sand tiger sharks are usually docile and harmless, but they have enough bite to seriously injure a diver if they decide to aggress for some reason (e.g. stressed, underfed, sick, trapped, startled, provoked, etc.), and I wouldn't go out of my way to pet them.
    But at the end of the day, sharks are wild macropredators, and their behavior can occasionally be unpredictable. There have been prior incidents in aquaria with sharks that were also deeemed generally harmless - a Tawney Nurse shark in a Melbourne aquarium in 2012; a sand tiger shark in an aquarium in Durban, South Africa, in 2016; a grey reef just this week in the Cairns aquarium; etc.
    I know some commenters here reacted that it's not an incident if there's no blood - but that would have qualified as an accident then, not an incident. This episode, on the other hand, was most definitely an incident.
    This clip was filmed using a GoPro Hero2 camera with native underwater housing mounted to an OTS Guardian full-face mask using a universal rail slide and a GoPro bicycle mount.
    This video was picked as Video of the Week on DeeperBlue.com! (www.deeperblue.com/video-close...)
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