Watchdog Group Calls for Ban on Shark-feeding Tours in Bahamas

Miami-based Marine Safety Group has called upon the Bahamas government to ban shark-feeding tours in the wake of a recent death. An Austrian diver was bitten by a shark while diving in Bahamian waters that had been baited with bloody fish parts; he later died from his wounds.

The man was on a commercial dive trip in open water without a cage or similar protection. Scuba Adventures of Riviera Beach, Fla., the dive operator, immediately called the U.S. Coast Guard, which airlifted the diver to a Florida hospital, where he later died.

Scuba Adventures’ Web site states that it offers divers the opportunity “to get face to face with sharks,” explaining that its expeditions “are unique shark trips run exclusively for shark enthusiasts and photographers.”

The Marine Safety Group, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the protection of coastal and marine habitats and wildlife and the people who interact with and use these resources, contend that shark feeding poses a threat not only to divers but to ocean enthusiasts far removed from feeding sites.

Other dive operators supported this claim. A spokesman at Bimini Undersea Adventures in the Bahamas said that sharks have been observed swarming a boat “at every location throughout the Bahamas that has, or still does, conduct shark-feeding dives.”