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Swimming with a great white shark

Skeptic Bob

Skeptic Bob

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A great white shark, believed to be one of the largest on the planet, has been spotted by divers as it fed on a whale carcass off the coast of Hawaii.
The divers, who captured remarkable footage of the encounter, say the shark is Deep Blue -- a 20-foot-long female.
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https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/great-white-shark-deep-blue-hawaii-scli-intl/index.html

I would love to cage dive with them one day but this is insane!

5EF796F4-6C18-42B7-AB1A-3F28D28804CA.jpg

That shark could bite her in half in an instant. Maybe she felt safe because the shark had already eaten?
 
Skeptic Bob said:
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/great-white-shark-deep-blue-hawaii-scli-intl/index.html

I would love to cage dive with them one day but this is insane!

View attachment 67248292

That shark could bite her in half in an instant. Maybe she felt safe because the shark had already eaten?
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I agree with you Bob, it'd be a bucket list item to do, to see them in the wild, in a cage, thanks.

Apex predators typically find puny, weak, defenseless (no claws or fangs) humans, munchy snacks.
 
Maybe she was confused between Darwin and Nobel but really just wanted to win something
 
Skeptic Bob said:
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/great-white-shark-deep-blue-hawaii-scli-intl/index.html

I would love to cage dive with them one day but this is insane!

View attachment 67248292

That shark could bite her in half in an instant. Maybe she felt safe because the shark had already eaten?
Click to expand...
I probably would not be brave enough to free five with that shark but yeah if it has a full belly and you know how to present yourself in a nonthreatening way it's probably pretty safe. Sharks are not aggressive without cause to be.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
I've dove with lots of mellow sharks, white tips, black tips, nurse sharks and leopard sharks. Still haven't seen a hammerhead on my dives. I've seen a tiger shark from the dive boat, they are nasty.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
It may be the camera angle but unless she is about 9' long (with the fins on her feet) then that shark appears to be less than 20' long.
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Hmmm, maybe she isn’t touching the shark. She may be swimming above it several feet. A fancy version of the photo lots of us took as kids with the first fish we catched, where you hold the fish out in front of you at arm’s length between you and the camera to make the fish look bigger.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
It may be the camera angle but unless she is about 9' long (with the fins on her feet) then that shark appears to be less than 20' long.
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A 9 foot GWS is still big enough to be deadly to a land animal unfortunate enough to be in the water when the shark is hungry.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
Hmmm, maybe she isn’t touching the shark. She may be swimming above it several feet. A fancy version of the photo lots of us took as kids with the first fish we catched, where you hold the fish out in front of you at arm’s length between you and the camera to make the fish look bigger.
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Red:
Maybe; maybe not. Does it really matter? The shark can, "with its eyes closed," outswim that diver. There is no quantity of "few feet" above, below, or beside that shark that is "enough feet" away to make being there "okay."

Maybe pregnancy, if the thing is pregnant, makes a female GWS docile? Females generally want and need more, not less, food when they're pregnant, but maybe GWSs are different in that regard. I have no idea. I do have one idea: stay the hell out of the water when GWSs are around. LOL
 
Xelor said:
A 9 foot GWS is still big enough to be deadly to a land animal unfortunate enough to be in the water when the shark is hungry.
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True, but part of the significance of this story is that this particular GWS is named “Deep Blue”, one of the largest known great whites living today. So it is more likely the camera angle, which means that shark is even bigger and scarier than it looks in that picture. Yikes!
 
eohrnberger said:
I agree with you Bob, it'd be a bucket list item to do, to see them in the wild, in a cage, thanks.

Apex predators typically find puny, weak, defenseless (no claws or fangs) humans, munchy snacks.
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donald-trump-eating_baby.jpg
 
When I saw this this morning I was on my phone and I thought is that person? I played the video and thought wow!! I'm not a water person but that is a double no. Still must have been an awesome experience for the divers. :thumbs:
 
one of my bucket list items is not ever swimming near a huge shark.
 
Skeptic Bob said:
True, but part of the significance of this story is that this particular GWS is named “Deep Blue”, one of the largest known great whites living today. So it is more likely the camera angle, which means that shark is even bigger and scarier than it looks in that picture. Yikes!
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Well, it's an apex predator, so it may behave like other such creatures, other than humans, in that when it's fully sated, unless an animal poses a physical, procreation or territorial threat, it's simply not going to, at that moment, attack it or feed. Still, that's a lot of variables to know of regarding a big ass predatory fish that just happened to show up.

This isn't an ursine, feline or canine creature about which we have a fair bit of behavioral and biological comprehension and that have shown themselves to exhibit a measure of emotional comptempation. It's a fish. Fish don't think about much because they have, well, fish brains. (LOL) One can literally count the neurons in a fish brain. Nuff said.
 
SkyFox76 said:
When I saw this this morning I was on my phone and I thought is that person? I played the video and thought wow!! I'm not a water person but that is a double no. Still must have been an awesome experience for the divers. :thumbs:
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"Effin' A!" They lived. You're damn right it was an "awesome experience." LOL
 
FWIW, it's my understanding that GWSs are "from below" attackers....but I'm sure they can make an exception when opportunity presents itself.
 
Xelor said:
Well, it's an apex predator, so it may behave like other such creatures, other than humans, in that when it's fully sated, unless an animal poses a physical, procreation or territorial threat, it's simply not going to, at that moment, attack it or feed. Still, that's a lot of variables to know of regarding a big ass predatory fish that just happened to show up.

This isn't an ursine, feline or canine creature about which we have a fair bit of behavioral and biological comprehension and that have shown themselves to exhibit a measure of emotional comptempation. It's a fish. Fish don't think about much because they have, well, fish brains. (LOL) One can literally count the neurons in a fish brain. Nuff said.
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Yeah, but when you dive with sharks, its not that scary. They are very predictable, you can gauge their mental state. I did a shark feeding dive once in Australia, coolest thing was hearing their biting and tearing of the food. They didn't give a damn about all of us watching...LOL
 
beefheart said:
Yeah, but when you dive with sharks, its not that scary. They are very predictable, you can gauge their mental state. I did a shark feeding dive once in Australia, coolest thing was hearing their biting and tearing of the food. They didn't give a damn about all of us watching...LOL
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Okay. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself...and lived. I'm happy to leave "shark talking" to you and others.

There are some things that, while one can attempt to do them, one really just doesn't need to do, even though doing them would be super cool and exhilarating. Swimming with and feeding great white sharks, for me, is one of those things.

Out of curiosity, were you diving with and feeding GWSs?
 
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