{"id":233254,"date":"2025-10-23T01:47:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T01:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233254\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T01:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T01:47:07","slug":"sharks-from-species-once-thought-harmless-kill-and-eat-snorkeler-in-feeding-frenzy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/233254\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharks from species once thought harmless kill and eat snorkeler in feeding frenzy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 40-year-old male tourist<\/a> was swimming and filming about 100m from shore in Hadera <\/a>off the coast of Israel<\/a> in April when he was suddenly surrounded by a shiver of dusky sharks, a species generally considered to be harmless to humans.<\/p>\n

Witness testimonies suggest a shark reportedly lunged<\/a> at his GoPro camera. Witnesses then heard him shouting: \u201cHelp\u2026 they\u2019re biting me,\u201d before he disappeared from sight as the water turned red and some shark<\/a> fins could be seen on the surface. By the time rescue boats could arrive, the water was bloodied and the man was gone, local reports say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day after, searches at sea recovered human remains<\/a> (in very small quantities) that allowed the forensic confirmation of the victim\u2019s identity, but also led to the conclusion that he had been devoured by \u2018several\u2019 sharks during this incident,\u201d researchers wrote.<\/p>\n

The report, published in the journal Ethology, documents the first known instance of a dusky shark<\/a> \u2013 a species with no known record of killing humans<\/a> \u2013 fatally attacking a diver during a feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n

Researchers have pinned the extremely rare attack to a combination of factors, including human error, ecological distortion, and animal instinct amid a feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n

While dusky sharks are large and seem like imposing predators, growing to about 3m (10ft) in length, they\u2019re typically shy and wary of people.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The day after the attack, searches recovered a small quantity of human remains that allowed confirmation of the victim\u2019s identity (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

The sea off Israel\u2019s Hadera has attracted these sharks in droves due to the warm water coming out of the coast\u2019s desalination plants.<\/p>\n

In addition, human feeding of these sharks, as well as abundant food waste dumped into the region, has served to attract dusky sharks further, with dozens of them lingering around every winter.<\/p>\n

Local boat operators catering to tourists have also thrown fish scraps in these waters to keep the sharks within their vicinity for customers.<\/p>\n

These factors together have led the sharks to associate humans with food, and a new behavioural pattern in them called \u201cbegging\u201d, scientists explain.<\/p>\n

A number of sharks have been documented swimming straight toward divers, sometimes even brushing against them, looking for quick meal handouts.<\/p>\n

A careful examination of images taken of the scene revealed that the sharks are likely dusky sharks based on the size and shape of their dorsal fin.<\/p>\n

Scientists theorise that the competitive food environment created in these waters has led to the dusky sharks exhibiting a frenzy behaviour at the time of feeding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe competition for access to the food resource overrides the species\u2019 usual behaviour, including the intrinsic non-instinctive nature of the (human) prey,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation likely occurred via a process of juxtaposition bites, with two distinct motivations: the first, a (probably single) reflex\/clumsiness bite driven by food begging, and the second, several predatory bites triggered by a feeding frenzy,\u201d researchers explain.<\/p>\n

Solutions that could be taken to prevent such incidents in the future are simpler and more effective than in the case of a classic fatal shark bite from known deadly species like tiger sharks, they say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe central objective is to eliminate the begging behaviour in sharks, and this can only be achieved by establishing and enforcing a complete and total ban on all artificial feeding of sharks by the public,\u201d scientists write.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny other measure could be complementary, but undeniably less relevant than this approach,\u201d they conclude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 40-year-old male tourist was swimming and filming about 100m from shore in Hadera off the coast of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,110027,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-233254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-feeding-frenzy","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}