Influencers are risking their lives for the perfect shark photograph, with experts warning that dangerous encounters are becoming more frequent. In less than a year, at least three influencers have been bitten by sharks in on-camera incidents.
Rise in dangerous shark encounters
A rise in social media content creators swimming with sharks has worried experts, who say they are seeing videos 'every single week now' of people swimming dangerously close, touching sharks, and even riding them. Scientists are issuing warnings, reminding influencers that safety instructions exist for a reason – and they'll only disobey them once.
In April, Tayane Dalazen, a 37-year-old lawyer from Sao Paulo, almost lost her leg after a 7ft nurse shark clamped its jaws around her thigh and held her underwater for several seconds during a shark-diving trip on the Brazilian coast. She told BBC News: 'There were a lot of them. Later, I discovered [the tour organisers] were feeding the sharks so that they would interact with the tourists.'
Recent incidents and injuries
Dalazen felt 'strong pain' from pressure on her leg but knew she had to 'stay calm' as she couldn't fight off the animal. After being released, she was left with lacerations to her thigh, describing the whole thing as 'very frightening'. Footage of her near-miss has been viewed millions of times online, and she admitted she should have kept a safer distance, despite not being there for social content.
Last month, another influencer faced losing his leg after an attack by a reef shark while spearfishing, following a Chinese content creator getting bitten in December while in the Maldives. Also last year, a holidaymaker in the Turks and Caicos Islands had both hands bitten off when she tried to take a photo of a bull shark. In hip-deep water, the woman, in her fifties, was circled by the shark, which bit her leg and cut off both her hands when she tried to protect herself. Her husband managed to 'wrestle away' the shark, but the incident was described as a 'living nightmare'.
Expert warnings and shark behavior
Two months after that, a 40-year-old snorkeller in Israel was killed by sharks after using a GoPro to 'fend them off'. The father-of-four had hoped to feed the sharks from a distance but was dragged out to sea as an eyewitness cried, 'They're eating him!' Experts have said that photographers and influencers are most likely to ignore safety guidelines.
According to Save Our Seas, only about a dozen of more than 500 known shark species have ever fatally injured a human. Most pose no threat. However, sharks roughly 6ft and deemed 'predatory' have the teeth and jaws capable of inflicting severe injury. The white shark, tiger shark, and bull shark are known to inflict the bulk of shark bites on humans. The International Shark Attack File says between 70 and 100 people are bitten each year, with most bites causing minor injuries.
Kristian Parton, a shark scientist and host of the Shark Bytes YouTube channel, said he's seeing such cases 'way more' than ever before. 'We're going to see people ending up in really serious incidents with sharks,' he predicted. 'We're talking about a true apex predator, a very large wild animal. You wouldn't walk into the Serengeti and try and put your hand on the face of a lion.' He added that if sharks become 'stressed out' in nursery habitats, breeding grounds, or feeding areas, they're being 'deprived of an area that's important for them to survive'. 'And that's definitely a problem.'
