You guys read about these attacks? The last attack, killing one German tourist, happened at the resort where me & my wife was staying back in March. We went swimming and snorkeling every day...

Hope they don't mention the name of the resort in the Russian media, or I will probably never get her to go snorkeling again... She asked me if there were any dangerous sharks in the area, and I said of course not! Ooops!

Yep, those great whites do have a reputation thats deserved.

Sorry to dissapoint you but they have mention it! Don't let her read RIA NOVOSTI ..

05/12/2010

The Egyptian Tourism Ministry closed all beaches in the resort of Sharm el Sheikh after another deadly shark attack on a tourist, Egyptian media said.

On Sunday, a shark killed a German woman tourist snorkeling off Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular diving destination. This was a third attack of the sharks for this week. One Ukrainian and three Russian tourists were mauled by sharks on Tuesday and Wednesday off the coast of Sharm el Sheikh. Two Russian women aged 70 and 48 and 54-old man lost their hands and received other injuries and are currently being treated in a Cairo hospital.
The beaches will be closed until a danger of further attacks by sharks is not completely eliminated.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20101205/161639105.html

Having dived extensively in the Red Sea and very often in the waters near Sharm el Sheikh I will have to state that when I was diving in that area shark sightings were a very, very common occurrence.

I will go further to say that I am surprised that sharks were not spotted when snorkelling if any snorkelling was done near the "drop-off", the "drop-off" being where the seabed changes from the coastal shallows to the rift valley.

Because the Red Sea is so well stocked (or at least was when I was diving there) with fish the common joke among the divers was that the sharks were so well fed that they could not eat any more.

The point that I am trying to make is that sharks are very common in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aquaba and that under normal conditions the sharks do not bother people.
I have read somewhere that a ship dumped a load of carcases into the Red Sea near Sharem and that is what must have triggered the change in the behaviour of the marine life (relevant to this post the sharks).
A scenario that would fit the feeding patterns of the shark that has been implicated.
I have read that the fish (shark) that has been implicated is a "White Tip" ---->





I feel quite sure that once the brouhaha settles the waters around Sharem will go back to normal.

Shoot, she read the name of the resort today, so the cat is out of the bag...

I've dived with sharks outside Sharm before, and personally I would not hesitate to get in the water again once the current chomper has moved on. I am pretty sure it is a single shark responsible for the attacks, and it is definitely not normal behavior for this kind of shark. I've done about 20 dives in the Sharm area and I've only seen sharks during one dive. Most of these dives were 10 years ago though.

The first reports said it was an oceanic white tip shark, and the next day they showed the picture of a dead mackerel shark...

No doubt Sharm will go back to normal again though, they have a big investment in the resorts in the area. They would probably go to the extreme of butchering every shark they can find in order to keep the tourist flow steady.

Sharks are the most misunderstood animals in the ocean today. Man's answer is to kill them all, and we will succeed in the very near future I believe. With the stupid Chinese responsible for the useless 'shark fin soup' slaughtering thousands of sharks and taking in some 150 thousand tonnes of shark fin alone last year.
The shark pictured in the BBC link is still a juvenile. Recently research has found that these youngsters (under 15yo) don't have nearly the large prey hunting skills that the adults have, this is thought to be why there are shark bites, but no fatality's in most cases. The young sharks are moving to larger prey and don't have the smarts yet to know what they like to eat. A shark will take 15 years to be able to begin reproducing, and then even at that rate they only will have 1 birth every 2 years. That's not to say they always reproduce every two years.
As tragic as the persons death is, the response is all too typical... kill them all. The article even says that they don't think they got the right one (big surprise)
Sharks are incredible creatures, we should not be driving them into near extinction as they are at the top of the food chain, and history has taught us what happens when you mess with that. I personally hope to one day dive and see sharks before they go the way of so many other animals on this planet.

I am a member of the international team investigating the shark attacks at Sharm El-Sheikh and have been trying to contact Yevgeniy (Eugene) Trishkin who was bitten by a shark on November 30th.

Could please you help me?

I want to ask him if he can identify the species of shark that bit him. If you can find Mr. Trishkin please email me at srilevine@gmail.com.

Thank you,
Marie Levine

Shark Research Institute
http://www.sharks.org

Hello Marie. Whilst I don't know Mr Trishkin I'm quiet sure that it was a nasty species that bit him.

Oops, sorry, I meant December 1, 2010

"A Serbian man is being hailed as a hero after killing—accidentally—a shark that had been terrorizing an Egyptian resort town. Dragan Stevic was black-out drunk when he vanquished the predator that has killed one beachgoer and injured four. He went with friends to the beach after a long night of drinking, announced that he would take a jump off a diving board, and the rest is history, the Macedonian International News Agency reports."
http://www.newser.com/story/107820/drun ... esort.html