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10m [33ft] behind everyone else. I saw it come out of the depths and it went towards our leader. It circled him and began circling the group. It was deep grey and was that close I could see electric blue fish swimming in front of it. It was circling lazily but with intent,’ he said, adding that on raising his head, he saw people on the snorkel boats shouting warnings. One by one, the snorkellers had to make their way to a reef before swimming about 100m (328ft) across open water to reach the boats. ‘We tried to keep the splashing down,’ Collins wryly observed. His wife, Christina Stafel-Collins, recalled how the party had been forced to flee for safety after the shark circled around them: ‘It was definitely an Oceanic Whitetip. We saw it so close-up. My husband is six foot and it was loads larger than him. I am so upset this woman has died – they should have shut the beaches.’

      But tales of shark encounters in the Red Sea kept on coming. British grandfather Gary Young, 65, told how he was scuba diving in 10m- (33ft) deep water off an area known as Shark Reef in the Ras Mohammed National Park when he saw a 2.1m (7ft) female Oceanic Whitetip shark. It came to within 1.8m (6ft) of him. Young, of Felixstowe, Suffolk, gave his account to the Daily Mail: ‘I was with three other divers on an hour-long dive. We were exploring the reef and looking at the fish and sea life. I looked back at my dive buddies and saw they had stopped and there was this shark coming towards us. We moved into the reef as we had been instructed to do if we saw a shark. The idea was that we would blend into the reef and any shark would be less likely to see us as a threat. She didn’t seem aggressive at all. I just stayed calm and did not make any sudden movements which could have encouraged it to attack me. It occurred to me that it could have been the shark which had attacked people and it is fair to say I was a bit apprehensive. It is the closest I have got to a shark in the five years that I have been diving. I certainly would not want to get any closer. It certainly did not put me off going back into the water. You just have to treat these creatures with respect.’ Remarkably unfazed, he captured the moment on his underwater camera. His pictures were sent to those trying to hunt down the predator.

      Everyone, it seemed, had their own opinion on the killing waters. Richard Pierce, chairman of the UK-based Shark Trust and Shark Conservation Society, observed: ‘This event is absolutely extraordinary. Since records began in the late sixteenth century there have been only nine recorded attacks on humans by an Oceanic Whitetip. It’s abnormal behaviour; this shark hasn’t just decided to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – there must have been a specific activity or event that brought it there. Something has brought this animal to the area and made it think dinner, and it’s likely that it involves something being put in or on the water.’ Like all others, Richard Pierce described the attacks as ‘unprecedented,’ adding: ‘For either of the two species involved to make repeated attacks on humans is unheard of. They simply do not go around attacking people for fun. To see so many attacks in such a short space of time is terrifying and very difficult to understand. Behind this, there is undoubtedly some kind of human trigger.’ Certainly, it was unusual to see the species as far north as Sharm El Sheikh at that time of year. The creatures may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time – but then, tragically so too were the victims.

      Simon Rogerson, editor of Dive magazine, commented: ‘If someone asked me a few weeks ago about the resort, I’d have said it was very safe. Generally, it’s a really good place. It gets very crowded because it is relatively cheap for Europeans, but the coral environment is very healthy, very beautiful; the water’s clear and it’s sunny. Whatever is going on there is an anomaly.’

      So, just what had incited the worst-ever recorded number of shark attacks that brought such devastation? Again, theories abounded. One came from Marcus Maurer, manager of the Extra Dive Centre, whose staff had been involved in rescuing the victims. He blamed the very people on whom the resort relies – tourists. ‘These are open-water sharks,’ he explained. ‘The biggest problem is people feeding the fish. The fish are an attraction, people like to see them but if people throw food in the water, the fish come inside the reef and maybe the sharks follow the fish. They are changing the behaviour of the animals. Along the beaches, notices in several languages say “All unused food and packaging must be put in the garbage container. Food may not be eaten in the sea or within a 4ft (1.5m) perimeter around the sea”. Divers know how to react in the presence of a shark. They know to stay calm, don’t kick or swim fast – and don’t beat the shark.’

      Maurer added that he had made more than 3,000 dives in over 13 years and had never had a problem with sharks, but snorkellers and swimmers with no experience or training simply panicked: ‘Then the sharks start to hunt. People have got to learn it’s not our territory, it’s the territory of the animals. If we go there, we have to respect the marine life.’ But it is hard to tell the thousands of children who go to Sharm El Sheikh and feed the brightly coloured fish as part of their holiday excitement that they could be attracting a killer to their feet. How are they to know that lurking so close by, sharks will pick up the pulsed vibrations sent out by shoals of fish gathering titbits and in turn attracting predators and becoming a meal themselves? And who heeds the ‘Do not feed the fish’ signs that are present in several different languages? ‘The whole trigger is food. Nothing else makes sense,’ says shark behaviourist Erich Ritter.

      The unique drop in the depth of the water at this particular stretch of Red Sea beach was also given serious consideration: the reef area is very shallow around the floating pontoon area but then suddenly ‘stairsteps’ down, dropping off from a depth of 20m (66ft) or 30m (98ft) to more than 800m (2,624ft) – but still very close to the beach. Ralph Collier explains: ‘You usually find Oceanic Whitetip sharks in waters 300m (984ft) deep or more. Because of this stairstep effect, it is not uncommon to see Oceanic Whitetips within 3m of the beach.’ The investigating team also discovered the temperature of the water around Sharm El Sheikh was several degrees higher than normal for the time of year and had been over the weeks when the attacks took place. Water temperature has a direct effect on the metabolism of all species of shark. The higher the temperature, the higher the metabolic rate – meaning the shark needs more food and energy to exist. This makes them more active in hunting and increasingly aggressive in their behaviour because they want to feed. The Mako shark previously caught and dissected was found to be undernourished, implying a desperate need for food no matter where it came from. ‘This animal was probably extremely hungry. It was very slim, almost emaciated. That is uncommon for Makos – their body structure is such that they are a well-built, stocky shark but this animal was not,’ said Collier.

      Other experts insisted that humans were again very much to blame. Divers and dive operators keen to give their clients a memorable experience were illegally feeding fish to sharks in the waters around Sharm El Sheikh also came under fire. (In some countries you will find the illegal practices of baited dives and ‘chumming’ – fish blood or flesh placed in the water to attract sharks and keep divers happy.) ‘This is not feeding. It is rather like one of us walking past McDonald’s and sniffing the air. It attracts sharks,’ said Richard Pierce. In South Africa, the Shark Concern Group has campaigned to ban shark-cage diving and chumming because it believes that it leads to sharks such as the Great Whites seeking out human company, claiming, ‘risks have increased as a result of how humans are interacting with sharks.’ But Pierce believes feeding sharks is a bigger risk than chumming: ‘There is no scientific evidence that proves that laying chum in the water for the attraction of sharks produces conditioned behaviour. In one area of South Africa there are nine boats going out on two trips a day, chumming the hell out of anything to attract sharks for tourists. If this was producing conditioned behaviour we would expect to be seeing the same sharks there every day but we don’t. The sharks have been tagged and observed, so we know. Conversely there is evidence to show that when you feed sharks, you do produce an element of conditioning. Certainly, in places where sharks are fed for tourism – in the Caribbean, for example – it has been proved that sharks have learned to associate the arrival of feed boats with being fed.’

      Some disagreed, however. Shark dive operator Jim Abernethy said he believed that sharks were not inherently dangerous and went on to compare them to birds: ‘Feeding the birds is an opportunity for people to get close to these animals and feed them. Birdwatchers feed birds, but every now and then a bird will bite a person by mistake.’ Abernethy has his supporters. Peter Knights, executive director of WildAid (a

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