From 1970 to 1994, I owned and operated Cronulla Dive School. During this time I took student divers to my favourite destination, an offshore reef known as Jibbon Bombora. The reef rose from 90 feet of water to 8 feet, with a gutter running through the middle. Half way up the gutter it opened to a deep cave approximately 30 feet wide and 5 feet high. I often took my students into this cave to see the local residents; port jackson sharks, blue grouper, numerous sponges, soft corals and the occasional giant cuttlefish and moray eel. In December 1975 a pack of seven grey nurse sharks took up residence in the cave. Their arrival, changed my life forever.

When the grey nurse sharks turned up, I was fascinated. I wanted to study them, to know everything about them. Were they aggressive? Would they attack a diver? What did they eat? Could they be tamed? Were they as harmless as people said? In 1975 little was known about this shark species and I was determined to change that situation. All I knew at that time, was what I had experienced during my years as a spearfisherman in the 60`s. I had dived many of the offshore reefs where the grey nurse were found. And each time I had gone back to these reefs over the years I was alarmed to see the numbers of nurse declining. I had never had any trouble with the sharks, but then again I had never attempted to hand feed them. In the 60`s human influence added greatly to the sharks demise. The expansion of long line fishing and stupid people with power heads being the main culprits. I felt it was time for some serious research to be undertaken in regards to the animals behaviour in the wild.

My first thoughts were to try and hand feed the sharks and find out what they eat and if they would take a fish from a diver. I took my boat to a reef off Cronulla and jumped in to spear some kingfish. This could be easily done as I had been a breath hold diver for many years and could free dive over a 100 feet.

The best way to get kingfish was to attract them first, this I did by spearing small yellowtail and kicking them off the spear. This procedure is known as "baiting up".

The kicked off yellowtail struggle and bleed and the water transmits both the vibrations and smell to any predator fish in the area. After awhile the predator fish turn up, kingfish, mackerel, bonito, trevally and the occasional unwelcome bronze whaler shark. As soon as the kingfish begin to circle and pick off the struggling fish, I dive down and spear the large 20kg silver animals.

Once I had got what I needed, I would climb back in my boat and head for the grey nurse cave. =My first attempt at handfeeding the nurse went terribly wrong. I swam down to the cave on SCUBA on my own, I had a bag of kingfish and a handspear for some protection. When I arrived at the entrance of the cave the ocean conditions were very poor with visibility at only 20 feet. The nurse sharks with their counter shading bodies are hard to see in poor light and I found it hard to see all the sharks at one time. The smell of the kingfish soon created a situation I was not prepared for.

The sharks became very excited and all approached me at once. As they came within a few feet I tried pushing them away with the spear, this only served to make them more angry, for the first time in my life I experienced grey nurse "cracking". The sharks would approach slowly, swimming literally inches from the sea bed, then at the last moment at only a few feet away, they would turn in their own length and literally crack their tail like a whip. The behaviour caused a loud deep thump sound and made me quite apprehensive. Once they cracked they were soon back , I offered the largest shark (a 10 foot female) a large kingfish from the bag, she opened her mouth to reveal rows of dagger like razor sharp teeth, she seized the fish from my hand and then gulped down the whole 20kg fish in a single swallow. She then disappeared into the cave.

Had I had only one fish, the whole situation would have become quiet. The smell of bloody fish would have slowly gone. However, because I had a bag of fish, the smell of blood was still very much around my body. This caused the other sharks in the pack to become more and more aggressive, with one shark repeatedly trying to push past my spear to gain access to me. I quickly pulled out another fish and gave it to the aggressive shark. Again other sharks approached and I had to do all I could to keep the hungry sharks away, bumping them with the spear and even at one stage punching a shark on its nose. Eventually, the situation became totally out of control as I was fighting for my survival with the whole pack snapping at the bag of fish. I abandoned the fish bag and headed for my boat with an 8 foot shark in hot pursuit. As now I was mid-water and extremely vulnerable, I tried to kick the shark away. This seemed to excite the shark more and it grabbed my white bladed fin and tore the fin from my foot.

Leaving the water, I crawled into my boat. My breathing heavy as I pondered what I had done wrong. Firstly it was obvious that the grey nurse sharks were not harmless and if stimulated could be dangerous to divers. What I had done wrong was I had taken a bag full of fish to the cave, I should have taken only one fish. When the first shark approaches give that shark a fish, as it swims away it takes most of the smell and stimulation with it, leaving no real reason for the other sharks in the pack to be aggressive towards me. The situation was a little like a seagull flying away with a potato chip, the other gulls follow. However, if you have a bag of chips on the ground, the whole flock of gulls will become frenzied and stay with the person feeding.

I believed if I only took one fish down to the cave at a time, I could manage the sharks and once the fish was eaten, the smell of fish would dissipate and the sharks would quieten down.

My next attempt worked far better and the one fish policy became my rule with grey nurse shark feeding. With other shark species I developed other methods of staying safe when feeding them.

Over the next seven years I fed this pack of sharks hundreds of times, learning much about the behaviour of these magnificent sharks. .

After paying visits to numerous other grey nurse shark locations up and down the NSW coast, I realised I had to do all I could to get the shark species protected.

The only way to do this was to record what I was doing on film. I bought a Bolex 16 movie camera and a 35 mm nikonis still camera for the purpose. I then made an underwater housing for the movie camera from a cut down SCUBA tank. I then proceeded to film the Nurse tail cracking; the different swimming including aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour.

To get extra close up footage of the way nurse sharks swallowed the fish whole, I literally held the fish in one hand and stuck the movie camera almost in their mouth. I filmed the tail cracking in slow-motion film to best illustrate the behaviour and experimented with many different species of fish to see what they preferred.

After a few years the pack of sharks became conditioned with my feeding rituals and their behaviour changed. They became less aggressive and the tail cracking began to stop. I also found that they were less aggressive towards me, they identified with the bag and the feeds became slower. The largest shark being a 10 foot female I named "bigshot" see photo and movie of the feeding in 1975. Bigshot eventually allowed me to touch her without tail cracking or snapping. I only had to arrive at the cave and she and the other sharks would swim around me. This happened if I had fish or if I had nothing.

My shark feeding off a Sydney beach attracted much media interest, I told the story many times and supplied still photos for magazines and newspapers and also supplied movie footage to numerous television shows from 1975 to 1984. (refer publicity page)

I also made myself known to the director of Fisheries Research Institute Dr. David A Pollard, B.Sc ( Hons) ph.D Principal Research Scientist. I supplied him much of my research and kept him up to date with my findings on the sharks. I raised my concerns about the decline in numbers of grey nurse on the NSW coast and why they should be protected. Over 30 magazines and newspapers and over 12 television shows from 1997 to 1985 published the story about my grey nurse family. Other people also took up the cause including Ron and Valerie Tailor and many others.

Eventually David Pollard pushed through the fisheries dept of Australia the total protection of the grey nurse shark in 1984.

In 1994 I was a guest speaker at the worlds first conference on the conservation of sharks, the venue attracted the world press and was held at Taronga Zoo. I spoke on the plight of the grey nurse sharks and showed numerous films and photos. Scientists came from all over the world to the conference. Other notable people also spoke about the grey nurse sharks including Neville Coleman, the world renown marine book publisher and underwater photographer.

The grey nurse became protected, but all the publicity I had given my own shark pack off Cronulla achieved shocking results. A Sydney aquarium took two sharks from the shark cave for their display, a situation that I do not agree with as the sharks are protected and this greatly depleted the pack. Another shark I found dead with a shotgun wound to its head, probably killed by some stupid spearfisherman that disliked sharks. The remainder either were killed or never returned to the cave.

After my experience feeding the grey nurse and all the media exposure I had been given, I decided to expand my knowledge of filming wildlife and my knowledge of marine animals. I travelled to many locations around the world hand feeding and filming sharks and many other species of marine animals. I became a regular presenter on television networks showing my latest wildlife films. Eventually supplying encyclopedia multimedia companies with wildlife footage.

Grey nurse sharks are reputed to be harmless docile animals and sluggish swimmers. Nothing could be further from the truth, Grey nurse sharks are mostly docile and pay little attention to divers. However, if stimulated with fish in the wild, they can become very territorial and even refuse fish to bite the diver holding the fish. This behaviour I believe is similar to a tame dog in a backyard. The dog will leave its food bowl to bite a person coming too close to his food. Grey nurse have excellent weapons. Their sharp teeth and powerful jaws could cause severe damage to divers. But if treated with respect, the sharks will not normally have any interest in divers or swimmers as they are fish feeders not man-eaters. As for the sluggish swimmers statement published in most journals about the nurse sharks, this is not true. They swim slowly in their lairs of gutters and caves but can swim with amazing speed when they catch fish or when cracking. I have it all on film! I do not suggest divers attempt to hand feed grey nurse as they can and are dangerous when stimulated. Simply leave them alone.

The sharks came to the Jibbon Bombora cave in 1975. Their arrival allowed me to assist people like David Pollard and others to get the shark protected. Their arrival also changed my career from a SCUBA diving instructor to wildlife film producer.

For credibility to the above grey nurse research carried out by David Ireland see the letter from David D. Pollard (research Scientist) below.

For more information about David please click here.