TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Underwater off the Florida Keys, Spencer Slate puts a piece of bait fish in his mouth and lets a fierce-looking barracuda snatch it from his lips.
It's a spectacle that draws droves of divers seeking close encounters with wild marine creatures such as sharks, barracudas and moray eels. Slate has been feeding undersea critters like this for more than 20 years.
Now conservationists are asking the state of Florida to ban diving excursions in which people release bait in the water to attract predators, especially sharks.
Instead, the state is poised to adopt new "voluntary" guidelines for dive tours that include what seems like a no-brainer: "If the behavior of the marine animals is aggressive or threatening, then the Interactive Marine Experience should be terminated."
It raises the question: Can a shark possibly be expected not to be aggressive when chomping down on a hunk of fresh fish? And if not, then what good are the state's new voluntary guidelines?
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is set to take a vote on the matter on Sept. 6. It's the third time the issue has gone before the commission, but it has taken on new urgency with 19 shark attacks in Florida this year drawing worldwide headlines.
A conservation group called Reef Relief and state Rep. Charlie Justice of St. Petersburg are seizing the moment to call for an outright ban on shark feeding. They say it's risky to go out in the ocean and condition sharks to associate people with food.
"Enough is enough," said Paul Johnson of Reef Relief. "We think it's totally inappropriate. All the examples we have on land tell us this is the wrong thing to do, from bears to alligators. There are no public lands in Florida where you can feed wildlife, but yet we're feeding sharks in the ocean."
Dive tour operators have lobbied the state's conservation agency in force. When the wildlife commission considered a shark-feeding ban last fall, hundreds of shark-feeding enthusiasts packed the meeting, saying there isn't any evidence that shark feeding leads to more shark attacks.
"Sharks are attracted to bait, not humans. When we go down there without bait, they don't come up and bite us," said Slate.
The commission asked the diving industry to come up with its own voluntary guidelines. The state then added some of its own. Among them: Divers shouldn't feed sharks by hand, shouldn't feed sharks within a mile of shore, shouldn't feed sharks near other divers or near reefs and should stop feeding if a shark longer than 5 feet shows up.
The state says just four dive tour operators — two in the Keys and one each in Palm Beach and Broward counties — offer shark dives.
The divers plan to lobby the commission at its Sept. 6 meeting. But Slate concedes they might face a serious public relations problem. "This is a bad time for this issue for us because all these people are getting nipped by sharks in the surf,' Slate said.
Dist. by Scripps Howard News Service