Meyer and Holland shares insights on recent tiger shark, eel bites

HIMB researchers Carl Meyer, left, and Kim Holland tagging a tiger shark. Image courtesy of HIMB.

There have been two shark attacks in one month on O‘ahu — one Saturday 17 October on the windward side and the other on the North Shore less than two weeks before that — making six shark attacks in Hawai‘i so far this year. KHON2 wanted to know how this compares to past years, and shark expert Kim Holland of the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) said the rate of attacks is on a typical pace for what normally happens in Hawai‘i. But Holland didn’t just talk about sharks: He said there are “lots of things in the ocean” that can hurt humans — such as the eel that bit a surfer off Waikiki on Saturday, just hours after the Windward shark attack — and what you do after a rare attack happens is what everyone should know about.

Read more about it and watch the video report at KHON2.

With the recent shark bites occurring around Hawaiʻi, Carl Meyer, assistant researcher at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), shared some interesting shark facts. Meyer is part of a research team using tracking devices to gain new insights into tiger shark movements in coastal waters around Maui and Oʻahu. The ongoing study provides insights into how these ocean predators swim, eat and live.

Read more about it and watch the tagging video in the UH System News; read more about the seasonality of bites and Hawaiian oral traditions in Ka Lā. and at ABC News (in a report about a boy bitten on the leg on 10-28-15 in the waters off Makaha Beach Park, O‘ahu). Track tagged tiger sharks at the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) Tiger Shark Tracking site.