Come on in - it's warm and the sharks are feeding

By DAVID USBORNE

MIAMI - As Jeff Torode manoeuvred his scuba-diving boat out from its dock, he did the equivalent of those last-minute destination checks that you sometimes get on aeroplanes.

"We are on a shark dive today. Everyone does know that, right? Anyone who needs to go back, say so now!"

You would think that every one of us would have screamed to be let off. But no, we nodded at him and smiled.

So there we were, 38 apparently sane souls heading out to the open ocean off Florida, in search of the one species of fish most people would very much like never to see, unless in an aquarium.

There were serious diving folk fiddling ceaselessly with the tubes and valves on their oxygen bottles, and then there were mums and dads and kids.

There was Martin, aged 40, for example, a teacher from Ramsgate, Kent, and an experienced diver.

But there was also Jacob, from Fort Myers, who was 12. Jacob, it turned out, had done this before and knew the drill.

Once tied to our buoy 500m from the shore at Pompano Beach, just north of Fort Lauderdale, we would plop in the water and head to the sea-bed 3m below.

Jeff, the skipper and part-owner of the South Florida Diving Headquarters, the scuba diving outfit running the trip, would get everyone sitting in a semicircle to wait for Scot.

Those not scuba certified - me and one other guy - would stay near the surface, using snorkel gear.

Scot Dickerson was the shark-feeder, who would make sure we got what we had come for - a close encounter with a shark.

"I was scared at first. But once you get down there, it's awesome," Jacob said, trying to reassure me.

Shark-feeding has become one of the fastest-growing attractions in south Florida and in the nearby Bahamas. It is also one of the most controversial tourist activities.

Florida has had a spate of highly publicised shark attacks, and some people are beginning to see a connection between the attacks and the suddenly popular shark-feeding safaris like the one I was taking.

But details of the debate, which has prompted some state politicians to try to ban shark-feeding, were not uppermost in my mind as I got into the water.

Moments later, as I bobbed around and fretted about my mask fogging up, Jeff appeared alongside me with interesting news. "Look, there's one down there already," he said breezily. And with that he vanished beneath the waves.

There it was. The fearful outline of its fins and snout was unmistakable. Silently cruising right underneath me was a grown nurse shark more than 2m long.



Nurse sharks are docile and rarely bother humans. Most species of shark will leave us alone, unless we antagonise or threaten them.

"Humans are not on their menu," was how Torode put it.

But right at that moment, none of that soothing science mattered to me. Nor was I impressed by the statistic that says you are more likely to be struck by lightning than eaten by a shark.

My mind was filling with images from Jaws, the 1975 horror movie by Steven Spielberg.

But I forced my breathing to slow and turned my gaze below to watch Scot drawing five sharks into the semicircle of divers.

They came to him, obviously, because of the food - bloody morsels of fish packed into a short PVC tube that he held in his right hand.

For 30 minutes he strung the sharks along, allowing them only occasional slurps at the pipe.

We had been told not to touch the sharks, but nearly everyone succumbed to the temptation to reach out and see what a shark feels like.

Up on the surface, looking down, we snorkellers remained mere spectators ... until Scot remembered us and brought the tube of food - and the sharks - up towards us. I dived down to meet them.

And suddenly, there I was, face to face with the largest of the sharks. Its eyes and mine seem to lock for a second and, had I wanted to, I could have touched it.

But suddenly I choked on a surge of adrenalin and rushed to the surface, lungs bursting.

This summer seems to have been declared the "Summer of the Shark" (to borrow a Time magazine headline). It started on July 6, when an 8-year-old Mississippi boy, Jessie Arbogast, was pulled under by a shark in shallow water while playing on the beach in Florida. In a few, horrifying seconds, the fish tore the boy's arm from his shoulder and took a bite from one of his thighs.

He was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital, where his arm, retrieved from inside the shark's throat, was reattached after hours of surgery. Jessie is home now, but still in a coma.

At least 20 people, mostly surfers, have reported suffering shark bites at New Smyrna Beach, near Daytona, this year. Compared with what happened to Jessie Arbogast, the attacks there have all been minor.

But it has all added to the summer's shark hysteria. And politicians are beginning to search for a reason. Some are looking no further than Torode and the other shark-feeders.

The sharks, says Charles Justice, a state representative who last week submitted a draft bill that would make shark-feeding illegal in Florida, are "associating humans with food".

George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, and a leading expert witness at recent hearings on whether shark-feeding should be outlawed, says most of the attacks happen when sharks mistake humans for other types of prey in murky waters or poor light.

But Burgess says he is "not a fan" of the feeding safaris. Twenty-four participants in dives such as Torode's have been wounded by sharks, he says, and the tours draw much higher than normal concentrations of sharks to areas close to popular beaches.

But Burgess concedes there is unlikely to be a direct connection between the shark tours and the attacks.

This is what Torode wanted us to understand, too.

The point of excursions like his - aside from earning him a living - is, he says, to "demystify some of the notions that you might have about sharks and help you to put aside some of the stigma there is about them, caused by Hollywood".

- INDEPENDENT