Shark Attack!

Just kidding. These two inquisitive reef sharks followed us into our anchorage in the Exumas.

This picture was taken with a GoPro with underwater filter attached. I have it mounted on a 4′ stick and for this I had it in the water off the swim platform. I put it on time lapse, one pic per second and just shot away while these guys were swimming about. Got lucky with this shot.

  These are both Caribbean reef sharks. According to records of shark attacks, a low threat to swimmers. From what I could find on the internet, less than 30 recorded bites by reef sharks, none fatal. Still, when they swim up to you they do get your attention.

We are on a ball at Cambridge Cay mooring field in Exuma Park. Unfortunately, years of visiting boats throwing food scraps overboard have trained the sharks to follow boats coming into the area from Exuma Sound ( as we had done that day) to get fed. 
  We spend a month here each season as park volunteers, harbor hosts for the mooring field, so we see all sorts of bad behavior (by humans, not sharks). We often see mega yacht crews entertaining their guests with shark feeding shows but occasionally see cruisers doing the same. Mostly folks just don’t know any better so part of our “job” is to inform visitors not to feed the sharks. Against park rules. Would seem like a no brainer, but we watch folks feeding sharks off one boat while kids are swimming off another. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen too often. We ask folks to hold their food scraps until they depart the mooring field. A good practice for any anchorage in the Bahamas.
  We are not, by any stretch, shark experts so we have researched the subject of sharks interacting with humans. Best we know, most of the types of sharks usually seen while swimming in the Bahamas will ignore people in the water, unless the sharks are feeding.

In Exuma Park we mostly see Reef sharks, which have a reputation for being shy around divers and will swim away. But there have been occasional bull sharks here, although we haven’t seen any this season. Even a few sightings of a hammerhead. 
  Shark bites in the Bahamas are quite rare. One a few years ago near Rose island but that was a swimmer getting to close to a commercial shark feeding show. A few recorded attacks of divers while spear fishing. So all in all, not a significant risk.
   That said, I was in the water a while back, cleaning the hull. Water was about 10′ deep and a shark swam directly under my feet. I was out of the water in a flash, only realizing a minute later that it was just a harmless nurse shark. 10′ is 10′ when it comes to sharks!

  We were at the Hawks Nest marina at Cat Island last month and here, like at some other marinas, the sport fishermen conduct shark feeding shows when they clean fish in the evenings. We were watching one evening and there were 10-15 sharks in the scrum; reef, maybe one bull and many lemon sharks. The lemon sharks were definitely the most aggressive.

 Easy to see how shark behavior in the presence of food could be dangerous to swimmers nearby. During this feeding event someone through a small stick in the water and the sharks devoured it along with the fish scraps.