Experts present some theories

While everyone thinks the June 7 shark attacks in South Walton were a tragedy, local charter boat captains are not surprised.

“It’s just a matter of Mother Nature and opportunity,” said Capt. Gary Jarvis, who has been fishing in Destin for more than four decades.

“The problem is that the shark population in the Gulf of Mexico is large and more abundant than it has ever been, at least in my lifetime,” Jarvis said.

“There are more sharks alive today than there were 44 years ago… because trapping them has been banned,” Jarvis said, noting that some sharks have been considered endangered.

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Jarvis said he has been talking to the National Marine Fisheries for the past decade about shark numbers and how the situation is getting out of balance. He said there is a false belief that sharks are endangered.

“More people are swimming in the water than ever before, and there are more sharks in the water than ever before. So the frequency of shark bites will only increase in one direction,” Jarvis said.

A 45-year-old woman and two teenage girls were injured in the June 7 attacks, which occurred about 90 minutes apart and about 4 miles away.

Were conditions different on Friday, June 7, when the attacks occurred?

“Sharks eat. This is what they do. They eat everything,” Jarvis said. They eat wave boards, beer cans, birds and even other sharks.

Original story:Three people injured in two shark attacks; beaches closed in Walton County

“If this thing is hungry, it will try to eat anything that is nearby. They just happened to be nearby,” he said.

“From a commercial fisherman’s perspective, it was no different,” Jarvis said.

“I see hundreds of sharks every day,” he said.

Jarvis said every time they fish bait at the mouth of the pass, they see 40 to 50 sharks.

He also said he spotted a 6-foot bull shark swimming around his dock at Ships Chandler Harbor on several occasions.

“And they’re not really nice guys,” Jarvis said of the bull shark.

“If I had to bet, I would probably say it was most likely a bull shark that attacked the swimmers,” he said, noting that these sharks are really aggressive.

Captain Judah Barbee, who regularly fishes for sharks, felt the same way about the shark species.

“If I had to guess, I’d say a bull shark. They are very aggressive at the moment. The other day we had one latch on the side of the boat. You could hear the fiberglass crunching,” Barbee said.

Sharks are aggressive when mating

Barbee, who was fishing for sharks, said when a reporter contacted him about this story that the sharks were just merging.

“When sharks mate, they bite each other. They grab each other’s fins and hold each other while they do their thing. They bit each other really hard… aggressively, brutally. I think that’s part of what’s going on,” Barbee said.

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He said when they fish for sharks now, they show signs of bites and the bites are fresh.

“And when we pull one out, there’s another one right next to it… which is usually a sign that they’re mating,” Barbee said.

“I think it (the attacks) was confusion… I might have thought it was another shark. They are extremely aggressive when mating,” he said.

Barbee said he usually sees sharks mating in May and June.

Sharks follow the bait

In addition to mating, attacked sharks may have been searching for food. Barbee said they are targeting redfish, a bait fish, and some of the larger sharks are targeting tarpon.

“They just follow the food,” Barbee said. “We can’t really do anything about it.

Capt. Katie Anderson, who was fishing pompano in South Walton on June 7, said there has been plenty of bait lately.

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“I just think they went deeper because the bait was deeper. Sharks just follow the bait.”

Anderson said they spotted a 2.5-meter shark swimming on the beach that morning.

“Sharks are everywhere, from 12 inches of water to 12,000 fathoms. There are no fences,” Jarvis said.

“Sharks are around and always have been, but not in the numbers we see today,” said Captain Neill Finkel.

“They’ve been protected long enough. They have to have at least a season,” Finkel said.

Finkel said he has caught sharks every day for the past 10 years within less than a mile of the beach, as well as large sharks weighing up to 400 pounds.

Barbee, who was fishing just off the beach on June 10, had already caught 10 sharks in the first two hours of the charter trip.

“We caught a lot of sharks, mostly bull sharks,” Barbee said.

“There’s a lot of sharks out there… that’s what it is,” Jarvis said.

Regarding the June 7 attacks, Jarvis again said there was nothing “peculiar” about the situation.

“It could happen again tomorrow, that’s concerning… or in three months,” Jarvis said.

Interview with Gavin Naylord, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research

To learn more about what may have caused the June 7 shark attacks, we spoke with Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, located on the University of Florida campus.

The first question for Naylor was about the recent sightings of two killer whales, known as killer whales, off the Destin shore earlier this week. In the days after the June 7 attacks, many people on social media wondered whether the orcas’ presence could have pushed the sharks closer to shore.

Could this have caused the sharks to come closer to shore?

“No,” Naylor said.

Naylor explained that killer whales certainly prey on smaller sharks, such as tiger and bull sharks, because they live closer to shore, while killer whales are commonly found in much deeper waters.

“We know nothing about the behavior of killer whales in the Gulf of Mexico. There is no evidence that they hunt sharks at all. So this is just a blind, transitive explanation based on rumors and little evidence. This is far-fetched and out of place, there is no evidence to support this claim,” Naylor said.

Naylor was asked whether increased sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were likely causing sharks to come closer to shore. Naylor said conditions were favorable for shark activity, as well as wind direction.

“Sea surface temperatures with the right wind conditions can cause some of the plankton to come close to shore, and the plankton is fed by the mendhaven, and the mendhaven is food for the sharks. If for some reason the mendhaven come close to shore, the sharks will follow them, and if there are people in the water, you have a problem,” Naylor said.

Naylor reviewed one unverified eyewitness account that on the day of the shark attacks, the freshwater estuary near the site was not producing the same amount of brackish water as had been seen in the days before the attacks.

Naylor explained that runoff from these estuaries pushes water out to sea. Without this flow, the “saltwater lens” would have the opportunity to move closer to shore, creating an environment conducive to viewing bait fish and sharks closer to shore.

Naylor was asked what residents and tourists can do to protect themselves from shark encounters. This includes wearing polarized sunglasses, staying away from bait, removing reflective jewelry, staying in groups, avoiding swimming at dawn or dusk and, if bitten, “calmly” exiting the water backwards while still facing the shark.

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