A scientific study of shark-dive tours in Hawaii indicates they pose little risk to public safety, largely because they operate at least three miles offshore and are frequented by Galapagos and sandbar sharks, two species rarely involved in attacks on humans.

Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology researchers used radio telemetry to track movements of sharks tagged during the tours and found the animals overwhelmingly stay far out to sea and don’t follow tour boats back to shore.
“When it comes to offshore caged shark diving tours, there is no evidence of any risk to nearshore recreational users,” said marine scientist Carl Meyer. “People need to understand there are already sharks in these initial shark-feeding areas and if these shark tours were a real problem, we would have seen it manifested by now by an increase in attacks.”
The study reports other factors that make the tours a minimal public safety risk include the fact shark-diving tours mimic the activities of crab-fishing vessels operating in the same area for more than 40 years, and that inshore recreational stimuli, such as a surfer paddling on a surfboard, "are substantially different from the conditioning stimuli associated with tour operations ... and, hence, unlikely to stimulate a conditioned feeding response."
Shark-dive tours became the subject of renewed controversy when a company
planned to launch an operation offshore of Maunalua Bay in Hawaii Kai.
Following community opposition, the company, Shark Discovery Hawaii, dropped its plans.
State Sen. Mike Gabbard, chairman of the Energy and Environment Committee,
and Sen. Clayton Hee, chairman of the Water, Land, Agriculture and Hawaiian
Affairs Committee, will hold an informational briefing at 6 tonight to hear from Meyer and others on the shark-dive tours.
The meeting will take place in the Capitol Auditorium. It will be broadcast live on Oahu on Channel 53 (NATV) and to the Neighbor Islands via HITS.