08/09/2018
Many of you will have heard the news this week that the Court of Appeal found shark cage diving is now illegal in New Zealand. This has come as a complete surprise to us and many others, as it was not what the pāua divers had brought to the argument.
Regardless, there are so many mis-truths out there that are being treated as facts by the shark dive Haters, so we’d like to clear these up for those that know there are at least two sides to a story:
1. Shark cage dive operations in NZ DO NOT FEED SHARKS. Pure and simple, the shark dive site is in the middle of a seal colony, and the sharks are surrounded by their own food source.
2. Shark cage diving does not occur “day in, day out” as what is being reported. Anyone who spends time on Foveaux Strait, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world, knows that the weather precludes a seven day schedule. Shark Diving season runs from December through to June, which follows when the sharks are resident at the dive site. Over that time we may only have ten days over the course of a month that we’re able to dive.
3. Considering the infrequency of dive trips, the absence of feed for the sharks from the dive boats, and new sharks not identified before seen on a weekly basis, we can confirm that there is no conditioning of sharks at the dive site. There is not the repeated stimuli present for this to occur. The research conducted worldwide supports that there is no conditioning of Great White sharks at shark cage diving sites.
4. We have heard from Stewart Island that it takes seven minutes for a GWS to go from our dive site to where their grandchildren swim. According to multiple published migration studies, the reported sustained swimming speeds of Great Whites are between 2.5 and 5.4 km/h so it would be impossible for a shark to swim that distance in that time.
5. Also according to Stewart Island residents, it takes five years to untrain a shark and the sharks turn up 30 minutes before a boat arrives.🤔
6. When our operation was based in Stewart Island, the Islanders believed the sharks followed our boat into Half Moon Bay, creating a hazard for small children standing on the wharf. By the Islanders’ logic, the sharks should have followed us to Bluff when we relocated to there. This has never been witnessed. If anyone is being followed, the fisherpeople cleaning their catch in the harbour at Half Moon Bay are the likely culprits. There is evidence of GWS’s following fishers into the Bay since the early 1900s.
7. There are more sharks in the water now than ever before, due to them becoming protected in 2007.
The Islanders and pāua divers have worked hard at closing down the shark cage diving industry. They have had to say a lot of untrue things based on no evidence to get people to believe them. There have been no official reports made regarding sharks interacting with pāua divers or others. Sharks swimming around boats happens all around the world, not just Stewart Island!
Because of the fear that people hold towards sharks, the fabricated anecdotal reports by the Haters are believed by people who don’t know any different (everyone's seen Jaws, right?!)
Shark Dive NZ has spent a decade trying to educate people on this population of sharks so that the fear is replaced with knowledge.