166 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide■ Some of the better-known places to see a variety of nearshore and oce-
anic sharks include Grand Bahama Island for Caribbean Reef Sharks
and occasional Tiger and Lemon Sharks; offshore of Oahu, Hawaii, for
Sandbar Sharks and Galapagos Sharks; and Blue Corner, Peleliu Island,
Palau, for Gray Reef Sharks. Some of these places offer cage dives, and
some involve free dives. For coldwater enthusiasts, Elliott Bay near Se-
attle, Washington (just off the Seattle Aquarium pier), has a shallow-
water population of Bluntnose Sixgill Sharks, a species that normally
occurs at great depths.
■ Manta Rays aggregate at known times and places off Yap and Palau,
Western Caroline Islands; Manta Point, Bali, Indonesia; Tofo in south-
ern Mozambique; Hanifaru Bay, the Maldives; and Kona, Hawaii.
■ Southern Stingrays at Stingray City, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands,
have grown comfortable with divers and gather at predictable locations
where people give them handouts. The rays tend to remain at the feed-
ing site, creating aggregations of animals that are normally quite soli-
tary. These rays have lower condition factors (body weight as a function
of body length), higher external parasite loads, and more bites on their
bodies due to fighting than nearby rays in areas where they aren’t fed by
tourists.
Shark ecotourism has its downsides. When shark fishing is banned in
favor of shark watching, fishers may not benefit from the large profits as-
sociated with shark watching. International tourists are seldom willing to
dive from the average fishing boat, and fishers can seldom afford the boats
and dive gear, cages, food service, and the like expected in tourist diving
operations. Another controversy surrounds interactive diving and in-water
shark feeding, where dive leaders or even tourist divers hand-feed sharks
attracted to certain areas by bait and chopped up fish parts (“chum”). A
major concern is that sharks come to associate humans with food. Sharks
near feeding sites now associate the low-frequency sound of a boat’s motorA 3 - to 3. 5 -m ( 10 - to 11. 5 -ft) White
Shark swims close by observers in a
shark cage in Shark Alley, near Dyer
Island, South Africa. Dyer Island
is one of the premier locations for
viewing White Sharks in the wild,
one reason South Africa was among
the first countries to outlaw fishing
for the species. Photo by Gene Helfman
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