The sharks are attracted to this patch of water in Hadera during the cold season because of the warmth generated by the turbines of a nearby power station.
Last month, a man who got a little too close was mauled to death as spectators on the beach screamed in terror.
Now, bathers, authorities, and environmental and shark experts are asking how such an event, never seen before in Israeli waters, happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future.
“I’ve been diving since 1982. I’ve seen many sharks in my life, it has been thrilling and beautiful to watch sharks... but they’re not, and I repeat, they’re not dangerous,“ she said.
“People were touching them and disturbing them,“ she said, adding that recent media coverage had drawn even more people to the beach.
Immediately after the deadly attack, the local authority erected metal fences with “danger” signs and blocked an access road into the adjacent nature reserve with a cement barrier.
Friends Einav and Carmel, teenagers from a nearby town, appeared largely undeterred by the recent death. They had come specifically to see the sharks.
Matan Ben David, a spear-fishing and diving instructor who said he has continued to enter the water, said swimmers should keep a distance and adhere to the rules of the sea.
“Sharks are an incredible animal, very majestic but they're an alpha predator and, at the end of the day, a lot of people do not always follow best practices,“ Ben David noted.
Human-wildlife conflict
But “you have a very, very small space that you see this human-wildlife conflict really coming out at certain times of the year.”
But with temperatures rising each year due to climate change, “you have a lot more bodies in the water coming into conflict with the sharks.”
“It usually comes down to a conflict of space, either food resources, space resources, and we’ve been seeing humans harass the sharks, really provoking them,“ she said.
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