Listen as NPR's Phillip Davis reports on Florida's move to stop shark feeding by tour operators. Florida's wildlife officials voted Thursday to ban shark-feeding scuba and snorkeling dives off the state's coast. The new rule, subject to a final vote at an October meeting of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, would protect divers' safety, officials said. The ban would affect diving tours where operators use chunks of raw fish, or chum, to get sharks to swim right next to divers and snorkelers.
Operators defend the dives, saying they dispel myths about sharks as man-eaters.
But officials said they feared the increasingly popular dives might be training sharks to associate humans with food. And while the timing follows closely on two fatal shark attacks off the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina, Commission Chairman David Meehan said the Florida shark-feeding tours are nowhere near the areas where attacks occurred. Florida s rule-making has been going on for two years, he said. Meehan said the ban would affect four dive operators in the state who offer shark-feeding tours.