Swimmers pictured far too close to sharks in the area where the man was killed. Photo: Science Direct//Tal Meir
Back in April, a man was killed by a dusky shark in Hadera, Israel. It was the first recorded fatality caused by a dusky shark since we began recording shark fatalities, and it confused a lot of people. Not only was it the first recorded dusky shark fatality ever, it was the first time a shark had killed a person in Israel since the country was founded in 1948. Now, researchers looking into what made the shark attack think they know why: people have been feeding the sharks there for years, which encouraged a sort of begging behavior.
“Artificial feeding, when it is regulated and monitored by authorities, can have massive benefits for ecotourism and local economies as well as improve the perception of sharks in terms of people being able to see them and spend time in the water with them,” said Kristian Parton, a marine biologist and shark scientist from the University of Exeter, in a release. “There are lots of places around the world where there are provisioning sites that work well, but there are others where there’s just no enforcement, no regulations – where people are able to get into the water with their own food. Sadly, in Hadera it wasn’t being done in the right way.”
The victim was snorkeling at the time of the attack. It’s well-known that sharks like to hang around there because of the warm water that’s discharged by a nearby power plant, but until April, it was more of an attraction than a worry. It’s theorized that the man’s GoPro may have had something to do with the attack as well, since sharks are able to detect electromagnetic signals that are emitted by possible prey and electrical devices. When one shark bit at the camera and bit the man instead, it may have set off a feeding frenzy that caused other sharks in the area to move in.
The whole event was filmed from multiple angles and quickly made the rounds on social media. The victim was alone at the time, near the warm effluent water from the power station, some 500 feet from the shore.
“The video captures the individual moments before being bitten and drawn underwater by multiple sharks, while off-camera voices speaking in Hebrew can be heard stating that he is calling for help,” a study on the attack explained. “Submersion occurred within two minutes from the onset of the encounter, accompanied by visible thrashing movements and blood dispersal.”
The next day, human remains were found by the Israeli Navy and police.
“Although humans are non-instinctive prey for the sharks, the competition to access the food resource would have overridden the species’ usual behavior,” wrote Russell Parton for the University of Exeter. “The researchers say tragic incidents like this can be avoided through more regulation and local authority control around artificial feeding.”
If better regulations aren’t put in place and the artificial feeding continues, scientists are worried that, instead of teaching us not to feed sharks, we might just end up killing the sharks as a preventative measure.
“To make shark-watching tourism safer, local authorities need to eliminate the begging behavior in sharks, which can only be achieved by establishing and enforcing a complete and total ban on all artificial feeding by the public, as well as banning spearfishing, which can often fuel the impulse in sharks to obtain food from humans,” said Parton. “The worst solution would be to unselectively eliminate all sharks present in this area in the form of a cull – especially since the responsibility for this specific incident lies essentially with humans.”