In the first time since the last 4 years, a shark attacked and killed a French tourist off the coast of Marsa Alam.
"This very rarely happens. It seems that the victim aggravated the shark or presented it with food, which caused a change in the shark's behaviour," MENA quoted Amr Ali, the president of the Society for the Preservation of the Red Sea Environment, as saying.
Sharks are common in the area and tourists often take pictures, but attacks are rare. The last person killed by a shark in Egypt was attacked while snorkelling near the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in 2004
From Reuters
For a record of shark attacks across the world, check http://www.sharkattackfile.net/
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It seems that irresponsible shark feeding activity, baiting in the sharks, encouraging inexperienced snorkelers to get in the water with C.Longimanus have finally resulted in a series of attacks and they are not the first either. These sharks are pelagics and opportunistic feeders, they will try anything as the open ocean is rather like a desert, there's not much out there and when there is something then its fair game. Now that these fish are used to snorkelers being in the water and with a scarcity of prey due to overfishing, they are going to get curious and approach the reefs and unfortunately attack swimmers and snorkelers. If you need more proof that people are being encouraged to snorkel with large predatory sharks just look on youtube. I think the Certifying Agencies (SSI, PADI, BSAC, NAUI) and the Egyptian government should be doing more to ensure that this sort of activity is not encouraged. As an analogy its kind of like letting tourists out of a Land Rover into a pack of lions in a Wildlife park. See the links below for some examples of what is happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGGNup1GFCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWbdxOFO8MM&feature=related
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