Footage has surfaced showing a large shark ripping a mask from the face of a scuba diver at Rangiroa in French Polynesia.
The 2007 footage, recently released in high definition, shows the unidentified diver having briefly settled at the bottom when a large shark veers in and bites his mask.
The mask comes off and the diver rolls backward. He suffered only a scratch on his forehead, according to reports.
Peter Schneider, who was part of the group of divers, was interviewed by the Daily Mail last week. “I couldn’t help but scream when I saw it happen,” Schneider recalled. “Once the sharks had cleared, I swam over to check on him.”
Schneider said that several silvertip sharks were circling at the time and that the diver had been teasing the sharks with bait used to attract the predators.
“I didn’t have any pity for the diver as he’d provoked the reaction and he knew it,” Schneider said.
Silvertip sharks inhabit tropical portions of the Pacific and Indian Ocean. They measure to about 10 feet and are powerful and aggressive feeders.
The Florida Museum, which maintains the International Shark Attack File, states that silvertips should be treated with caution “due to [their] size and abundance around offshore reefs.”
The species, however, is implicated in only one unprovoked attack on a human.
Video showing a scuba diver’s eerie swim through a sea of garbage off Bali this week vividly illustrates the alarming extent of plastic in our oceans.
Rich Horner used a pole-cam off Manta Point to show the extent to which non-biodegradable plastic and other garbage flows the currents around Bali and other Indonesian islands.
Manta Bay is a renowned diving and snorkeling destination. Giant mantas utilize the bay as a cleaning station – where tiny fish remove their parasites – and represent the primary allure for divers. But on this day it seemed best for humans and mantas to avoid the area or risk becoming ill.
“The ocean currents brought us in a lovely gift of a slick of jellyfish, plankton, leaves, branches, fronds, sticks, etc.... Oh, and some plastic,” Horner wrote on Facebook.
“Some plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic cups, plastic sheets, plastic buckets, plastic sachets, plastic straws, plastic baskets, plastic bags, more plastic bags, plastic, plastic, so much plastic!” Horton, a Bali resident, added: “Surprise, surprise, there weren't many Mantas there at the cleaning station today... They mostly decided not to bother.”
Giant mantas inhabit tropical waters around the world. 9News reports that the nation last year pledged to spend $1 billion per year to reduce this type of pollution.
As bad as the pollution problem was during Horton’s dive, he said currents swept the area clean the following day. “As expected, the next day, what the currents bringeth, the currents taketh away!” Horton wrote.
“The divers who went to Manta Point today report they saw no plastic/trash at all. Great for the mantas coming in for a clean at the station, but, sadly the plastic is continuing on its journey, off into the Indian Ocean, to slowly break up into smaller and smaller pieces, into microplastics. But not going away.”
Great white shark appears in lights of submersible at 500 feet
By Pete Thomas
A great white shark named Deep Blue, measuring 20-plus feet and spotted sporadically at Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, has been called the largest great white shark ever caught on video.
The massive predator was featured three years ago by Discovery, along with researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla.
Two years ago, Hoyos posted a clip to Facebook showing the female shark cruising ominously past an open-topped cage, dwarfing the divers. “I give you the biggest white shark ever seen in front of the cages in Guadalupe Island,” Hoyos wrote.
On Friday, Hoyos shared new footage showing what the researcher believes is Deep Blue swimming in the lightless depths at Guadalupe (video posted above).
“Deep Blue in deep water?” Hoyos wrote. “We did an expedition on a submersible at 500 feet in Guadalupe Island this week and look what we saw!”
Viewers enjoy only a fleeting glimpse of a giant white shark turning in the vessel’s lights before vanishing in the darkness.
Deep Blue in a video screen shot from footage shared in 2015
“It’s so big. It’s really big. Wow, look at the belly!” Hoyos says in the footage. “Oh my God… Oh my gosh, it’s really, really big. Wow! Jesus Christ!”
Hoyos confirmed the depth of the sighting – nearly 500 feet – but did not say for sure whether the shark was, in fact, Deep Blue.
Guadalupe Island, 165 miles west of the Baja California port of Ensenada, is seasonal home to dozens of adult great white sharks. Many of the sharks are named, based on distinctive markings, and repeat divers look forward to seeing their favorite sharks on return trips.
Deep Blue, obviously, is one of Guadalupe’s most sought-after sharks.
Incredible footage has surfaced showing a massive great white shark clipping a scuba diver in the back of the head – with its mouth slightly agape – as the diver, who is on the seafloor, looks in the opposite direction.
Dennis Dempsey, who first shared the footage to YouTube on Saturday (video since deleted), does not identify the salvage diver or reveal the South African location. Dempsey could not be reached for comment.
As viewers can see, the water is green and murky. It’ not clear if the diver is aware of the shark’s presence until the shark makes him aware with a snout-bump to the back go the head.
Drew Scerbo, scientific advisor for the White Shark Interest and White Shark Advocacy groups, told me he could see no reason to believe the footage is fake or had been manipulated, and that it looks as though the shark tore a piece of rubber on the diver's hood.
"Looks like the diver reaches up and pulls off a piece of his hood," Scerbo said. "Thank goodness for a 7-9 mm piece of neoprene, eh?"
A Facebook commenter on the Marine Conservation Science Institute page observed: “I just wonder how long that shark was checking them out without them knowing it, before coming in for a closer look. As soon as the guy was looking the other way he just dropped in like he was waiting for that, just out of sight range.”
This appears to have been a territorial or investigative strike – not a serious ambush attack – but it still could have resulted in more serious consequences.
Writes another commenter on the MCSC page: “Dude definitely had to change his shorts after that close encounter."
The video was posted to the SA Spearfishing Facebook page early Sunday, and after 11 hours it had been shared more than 20,000 times.
A Florida family was greeted Sunday by a whale shark “longer than a school bus” and accompanied by hundreds of smaller fish.
“I heard my husband yelling over his regulator and looked up to see a what looked like a rolling cloud,” Brock said. “There were cobia and remoras everywhere - then I realized they were attached to something, and that something was a whale shark!”
The rare encounter with a 30- to 35-foot whale shark occurred off West Palm Beach as Brock was scuba diving with her husband, Keith Brock, her 13-year-old cousin, Addie, and their guide, Craig Buss.
Whale sharks are the planet’s largest fish and can reach lengths of about 40 feet. Fortunately for humans, they’re filter feeders and subside largely on plankton and small fishes.
Brock and her group had been diving with Pura Vida Divers at spot called The Trench, and had begun its ascent ascent from about 60 feet when the whale shark materialized in the distance.
“They are rare in Florida,” Brock said. “People dive their entire lives and never get to witness that.”
Making the experience more surreal were all the remoras and cobras attached to or swirling around the whale shark. (Remoras often attach to sharks and will eat parasites and other organisms from the skin of the host animals.)
“Our teeth were chattering,” Brock said. “The whale shark swam right at us, and then through us. Such a gentle giant. He barely had to flick his tail (which was much taller than me) to gracefully glide through the water.
“When he started to swim away we all just looked at each other in total disbelief. It was the most amazing experience I've ever had diving!”
A diver hoping to photograph great white sharks from the safety of a metal cage instead found himself hunkering down while a crazed shark – which had somehow broke through the bars to join the man – tried desperately to escape.
"Oh God... I almost had a heart attack," the diver says in the accompanying video, in the aftermath of his harrowing encounter.
It was the second time in less than a month that a great white shark had entered an occupied cage at Mexico’s Guadalupe Island.
During the latest incident, the shark was following a chunk of tuna being pulled alongside the cage by a crewman aboard Solmar V. The shark lunged, crashed through the bars, and 30 seconds of chaos ensued before the shark leaped out of the cage through its open top.
When the diver climbed out of the cage and onto the boat, there was a tangible sigh of relief.
Great white shark bleeds while finally escaping through the top of the cage.
The video was uploaded Monday by YouTube user Gabe and Garret. Their father, who also has not responded to an inquiry, wrote on Facebook:
“Great white sharks are awesome and what appears to be an 'attack' on a diving cage is not. They are temporarily blinded when they open their mouths, so when the shark went for the tuna bait on the rope it accidentally slammed into the cage.
“They can't swim backwards so it thrust forward through the cage with a diver inside. Rest assured, no one was injured and after a dramatic half minute, the diver emerged safely.”
How did this happen?
Crewmen sometimes pull roped chunks of tuna alongside cages, allowing photographers shooting through a wide gap to capture memorable images.
In this case, it appears, the crewman let the tuna dangle for too long next to the cage. The shark lunged after the bait and somehow jammed itself into the cage.
That shark, also, was able to get way without anybody – excluding, perhaps, the shark – being injured.
Guadalupe Island, a remote volcanic land mass 160 miles west of Baja California, is seasonal home to dozens of great white sharks. Prime viewing months are August through October.
The image shows Tori Hester hovering just above the sea floor, slightly beneath the fish tornado, mesmerized by the phenomenon.
“We were swimming along and saw a small band of jacks heading away from us, so we followed them,” Jeff described to GrindTv. “That small band slowly grew bigger and bigger until just off in the distance, this massive fish tornado appeared.
“I was awestruck. I had never seen anything like that before in my life.”
As a photographer, Jeff’s reaction was swift. He motioned for Tori to swim toward the tornado, so he could use her to provide a sense of scale for the image.
“I want to bring the viewer into the frame and imagine themselves as the human subject looking at this remarkable scene,” he explained.
Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park, beyond a remote section of Baja’s coast, is a vast system of reefs that has been protected from fishing since 1995, allowing sea life to thrive.
Several species of jacks breeze through the area, and sometimes swim in schools so large that they can blot out the sun for divers exploring the reefs or rocky bottom.
Another famous fish tornado image was captured at Cabo Pulmo in 2012 by Octavio Aburto, showing another diver, David Castro, in a “David and Goliath” pose next to the swirling mass of fish.
Aburto, a scientist, described the tornado phenomenon as a spawning event.
Night divers off Hawaii’s Kona coast last weekend marveled not only at the giant mantas they had planned on viewing, but a critically endangered monk seal that interacted with the mantas and the divers for two nights.
It was magical experience from a purely aesthetic standpoint, given the gracefulness of the mantas as they soared in and out of the lights feeding on plankton, and the surprise appearance of an agile and curious seal.
But it was remarkable, also, because Hawaiian monk seals are critically endangered, numbering only 1,100. They're the most endangered mammal in the United States, and one of the rarest mammals in the world.
Most inhabit remote unpopulated islands northwest of the main islands, while only three are known to frequent Big Island waters, including a lone female: the interloper seen in the footage, Waimanu, who is pregnant!
The “never-before-seen” footage was captured by Manta Ray Advocates Hawaii photographers Martina Wing, Ryan Leinbach and Adam Fram.
Manta Ray Advocates Hawaii conducts night dives off Kona, at one of only a few global locations that predictably attract the gentle giants, which forage beneath the lights and create a surreal experience for scuba divers and snorkelers.
The group posted the footage to its Facebook page Monday night, inspiring viewers to share it on their pages and chime in with comments.
Wrote a woman named Renata: “Incredibly awesome, breathtaking images. Being the only female one on the Big Island, she must be a lonely seal without any girlfriends and about to give birth! Maybe she will come back with a pup?”
Added a commenter named Whitney: “This made me cry like a baby. Such an incredible thing to see. I can’t even imagine what it was like to see it in person!”
Many were curious about the lettering on the seal. It was painted by researchers, who catalog and monitor Hawaiian monk seals throughout the islands.
According to NOAA, Hawaiian monk seals can weigh nearly 500 pounds and measure about seven feet. They are one of only two monk seal species, the other being the Mediterranean monk seal. A third, the Caribbean monk seal, is extinct.
Hawaiian monk were hunted to the brink of extinction in the late 19th century, and unfortunately they’re still teetering on the brink, threatened by many factors, including changes in food distribution (mainly an issue for pups), entanglement in fishing gear, and human interactions on main island beaches, where they haul out.
Researchers are hopeful that Waimanu's pup will be healthy and live long enough to add to the population.
Mexico’s Guadalupe Island is seasonally home to dozens of adult great white sharks, which prey largely on seals and sea lions.
But it seems that at least one baby sea lion has discovered a means by which to get out of harm’s way when a giant predator is in its midst: Swim into a metal cage and hang out with divers until the threat is gone.
The accompanying footage shows the sea lion practicing this escape method as a large white shark is making a pass alongside some cages.
Martin Graf, who runs Shark Diver and has been operating for years at Guadalupe, said this was the first time any of his divers had watched a sea lion swim into one of its cages.
“He swam into the cages and came up right under the swim step, where I was actually touching him,” Graf said. “When a big female shark swam by, he darted into the cage, and as soon as the shark turned away from him, he swam out.
"The only other time something like that happened is a couple of years ago, when we actually had a baby sea lion keeping me company on the swim step."
The baby sea lion shown in the footage, Graf said, made it safely to shore soon after the shark had passed.
White sharks are present in the waters around Guadalupe Island, one of the world's premier cage-diving destinations, from about mid-summer to early winter.
The island is located 165 miles west of the Baja California port of Ensenada.
Capturing selfies that feature animals is a popular trend, but this practice is not always regarded as safe–and this would certainly seem to be the case when the animal is a great white shark.
Peter Verhoog, director of the Dutch Shark Society, successfully managed to capture a great white shark selfie while cage-diving at Mexico’s Guadalupe Island.
He did this by leaning far out of the cage and positioning his camera so it captured his face with the shark passing by. The event was videotaped and the accompanying images are screen grabs.
Verhoog, 59, is referred to as a “brave photographer” by the Daily Mail, and the photographer said he did not feel as though what he did was dangerous.
'I began making selfies with all kinds of sharks–mostly for fun,” Verhoog said. “Only later I realized that they could show people what sharks are like–when behaving normally, there is no danger.
“People are not a prey for great white sharks–they feed on fish and marine mammals, like seals.”
But not everybody is impressed.
Shark Diver, a commercial outfitter that offers cage-diving trips at Guadalupe Island, was critical of the Daily Mail for glorifying Verhoog’s behavior, and of Verhoog for passing his actions off as being safe.
"When it comes to sharks, the news coverage is pretty atrocious," wrote Shark Diver's Martin Graf, in a blog post. "It seems like they either portray the sharks as mindless killers, or harmless pets. The people that get coverage, are invariably doing something stupid, or flat illegal."
Graf placed Verhoog's actions in the stupid category, and continued:
“This picture reminds me of a professional photographer that was leaning out of a cage, filming a shark and never realized that a second shark was coming at him, with his mouth open.
“If it wasn't for another diver smashing his camera against the sharks nose, it would have taken the photographers head off.... It is not the shark that you see that will get you, it's the one you never know is there.”
Graf went on to say that Verhoog could easily show what sharks are like without placing himself in the photo for the purpose of obtaining a selfie:
“Newsflash, while it is true that we are not on their menu, great white sharks are NOT harmless, especially when you are in a baited situation."
Guadalupe Island, which is located 165 miles west of Baja California, is one of the world’s premier destinations for diving with great whites.
It’s worth noting that there have been fatal great white shark attacks at Guadalupe years ago, years ago, before cage-diving operations became established there.
Shark Diver and other cage-diving operators are concerned that if there is another fatal attack, Mexico might react by shutting down the operations.
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