First-Of-Its-Kind Fatal Shark Attack Due To “Begging Behavior” Encouraged By Humans Feeding Them Scraps

The first documented case of a person being killed by a dusky shark occurrred in April 2025. Now, new research has raised concerns that the extremely rare attack may have been motivated by a kind of “begging behavior” that’s been encouraged by years of humans feeding the sharks in the region scraps.

The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

“Artificial feeding, when it is regulated and monitored by authorities, can have massive benefits for ecotourism and local economies as well as improve the perception of sharks in terms of people being able to see them and spend time in the water with them,” said Kristian Parton, a marine biologist and shark scientist from the University of Exeter, in a release. “There are lots of places around the world where there are provisioning sites that work well, but there are others where there’s just no enforcement, no regulations – where people are able to get into the water with their own food.”

“Sadly, in Hadera it wasn’t being done in the right way.”

On April 21, a man was snorkeling in the waters off Hadera Beach in Israel when the attack took place. He had a GoPro camera, which may have contributed to the first shark biting him as it would have been emitting a slight electromagnetic signal that the researchers say could have been misidentified as potential prey.

It’s possible that the bite aimed at the camera instead bit the snorkeler, wounding him. The resulting sound and olfactory stimuli as he began bleeding then triggered a feeding frenzy, resulting in several sharks engaging in predation bites.

It’s not in dusky sharks’ nature to bite humans, who have been interacting closely with the sharks for a long time without any reported fatal incidents before the attack in April 2025. On this occasion, it seems that the competition between the sharks overrode their instincts, causing them to attack something they wouldn't usually regard as prey.

The researchers suggest that better regulation needs to be put in place, to prevent the kind of begging behavior that sees dusky sharks approach humans in the hopes of getting food scraps. They also warn that interventions need to address the problem appropriately, and find a way to reduce the risk of human-and-shark interactions without resorting to mass culls.

“To make shark-watching tourism safer, local authorities need to eliminate the begging behaviour in sharks, which can only be achieved by establishing and enforcing a complete and total ban on all artificial feeding by the public, as well as banning spearfishing, which can often fuel the impulse in sharks to obtain food from humans,” said Parton. “The worst solution would be to unselectively eliminate all sharks present in this area in the form of a cull – especially since the responsibility for this specific incident lies essentially with humans.”

The study is published in the journal Ethology.