Just click on the link below and make a small donation through PayPal. “The shark tore through the skin, fat tissue, muscle, muscle sheath and, unfortunately, my tibial artery which caused me to lose more than a liter of blood,” Simpson said. General Admission – Dolphin Shows, Sea Lion Shows, Parrot Shows! And there’s only been one incident reported in the record books since the 1800s. A few years ago an organization called OCEARCH began live capturing, taking samples and tagging large sharks, concentrating on Great White Sharks. Marathon, FL 33050, (305) 363-2957 Note: Although we are just recently being made aware of their travels through Florida Keys waters, they most certainly have always been around. FloridaKeysTreasures.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Meet and interact with dolphin, sea lion, turtles, sharks, alligators & rays! All locations have been marked on the 2017 Shark Attack Bites Tracking Map. Guests can get up close and personal with one of the Florida Keys most common shark-the Nurse Shark. While learning about this unique species, guests can learn a little bit more about some of the outlandish myths surrounding sharks and what we can do to help and protect these important animals. The first dorsal fin is short and not much larger than the second dorsal. We are open! Florida Keys Shark Diving. Over the last few months, some really cool critters have been spotted in our waters to the delight of divers and boaters. Size: From around 20 pounds to well over 100 pounds. Most associate Great White Sharks with the waters of New England and California. Why You Need To Go: Emerald Charters is for the faint of heart, but great for thrill seekers, because they spear to lure in more sharks, so make sure youâre comfortable with that before booking! Most recently, Big Pine Key’s Brittany Burtner and her partner Dave had an hours-long encounter with four whale sharks in Looe Key. Game Qualities: Less spectacular, but otherwise pretty much the equal of the blacktip as a light-tackle gamester. These stories usually stayed within the local fishing docks and were not known widely. Note: Although we are just recently being made aware of their travels through Florida Keys waters, they most certainly have always been around. © Keys Treasures Blog and FloridaKeysTreasures.com, 2000-2020. This tag transmits the shark’s location via satellite – whenever the shark’s fin breaks the surface – and that location is sent to OCEARCH.The SPOT tag wet/dry switch needs to be dry for a minimum of 90 seconds during which 3 consecutive pings must occur to get an accurate geo-position. Size: Most seen in shallow water are from 5 to 50 pounds, but they can grow quite large in deeper water. [email protected] You can help Keys Treasures keep these pages providing your favorite information. Register this device to receive push notifications. After each presentation, 10 lucky guests will have the opportunity to feed one of our resident nurse sharks! At the end of June, Islamorada Dive Center posted a popular Facebook video titled “Manta time!, in which dive instructor Kelsey can be heard screaming as the video rolls on a graceful reef manta gliding by. Size: Commonly runs more than 500 pounds and sometimes as much as 1,000 pounds; possibly can reach one ton. Whale sharks and manta rays are less commonly seen, but when they are, it’s in the summer. Every summer, we even have an entire week dedicated to documentaries and movies about these beautiful monsters. Mako sharks are found primarily offshore in the Gulf Stream. Hammerhead, whale shark sightings increase. Just mention that word and it may conjure up images of a scene from the movie Jaws.Reports of shark attacks along Florida's East Coast perhaps make us even more likely to have an adverse reaction. And for those who like statistics, you’re 45,000 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a shark attack. Great hammerheads return to the Keys in early spring and leave during the hottest months of summer. He set up a GoFundMe. They feed mostly at night on spiny lobsters and other crustaceans, small stingrays, sea urchins, squid and bony fishes. office: 305.453.6928 The animals ranged in size from 22 feet to almost 40 feet and were just “cruising around this quarter-mile area feeding on plankton.”. in the Gulf of Mexico north of Marathon trying to navigate around the Keys and up the East Coast. Why You Need To Go: Calypso Dive Charters offer private and public dives, ranging from shark dives to reef dives, wreck dives, lobster hunting, and more! Since then, Young has seen “a number of them” in addition to large eagle rays last week. By using our site, you agree to our. Are there Sharks in the Florida Keys? Grace Casselberry, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been working with sharks in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary since 2014 and studies the predator-prey interactions between great hammerhead sharks and Atlantic tarpon. Customized Virtual Tours starting at $10.75, We use cookies to give you the best experience. “As our local hospital is far more expensive than most, I must turn toward crowd funding,” he posted. A SPOT tag (a real-time satellite tag) is mounted on the shark’s dorsal fin, providing up to 5 years of tracking. Nine occurred in Australia, one of which was fatal and one with no injury.