Sea rescue experts don’t think that a teenager who went missing in the Bahamas recently came into contact with sharks.
Recent Louisiana graduate and student athlete Cameron Robbins was captured on some grainy night-time footage swimming in the seas around the Bahamas on May 24.
However, this footage is the last time he was seen alive.
The 18-year-old, who had just graduated from the University Lab School in Baton Rouge, disappeared without a trace, though some had speculated that he might have been attacked by a shark, as a mysterious object was seen in the water near where he was swimming.
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Despite a huge search effort, his body has yet to be recovered after almost two weeks, and a recent obituary stated: “He was lost at sea after being reported missing off the coast of Athol Island in the Bahamas on the evening of May 24,
“Though he left this world far too soon, he lived a life full of good friends and family. He was funny and kind-hearted, but also intense and driven.”
There are sharks in the waters around where the ship – a pirate ship vessel called Blackbeard’s Revenge – was anchored.
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However, experts interviewed by the New York Post aren’t so sure that the marine animals are responsible for his disappearance.
Brian Trascher, vice president and spokesperson for the United Cajun Navy, which has worked alongside Cameron’s family during the rescue efforts, said: “We’ve consulted with oceanography and fisheries experts,
“They don’t believe … that he came in contact with any time of shark or predatory marine life.
“And until we get better video or something more conclusive, that’s going to be our position.”
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Another expert, Butch Hendrick of the dive training company Lifeguard Systems, said that he hasn’t ‘heard a lot about shark attacks in the Bahamas’.
Whilst some boats like the one Robbins was on do drop food into the ocean, which can attract predators, he said that the behaviour of whatever was in the video was not like that of a shark.
“The tendency is not that [the shark] came in, took him, and took him to the depth,” he said.
“They would hit him, that could be enough to totally incapacitate [him]. That could be enough to cause him to drown right there.”
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He also noted the lack of blood in the water, and that it’s unusual for sharks to completely finish eating a human after attacking them.
“The tendency more often is to take a bite, shake and decide this isn’t what they wanted,” he said.
They can take ‘a very large chuck’, but ‘the concept that they came back and ate more is slim’, Hendricks added.
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Other theories about what actually happened include hypothermia – which can happen even in the Bahamas – and Robbins losing his breath after jumping out of the boat.
Currents and head injury are also potential risk factors.
Hendricks is not hopeful that Robbins body will ever be recovered, as he explained: “This happened well over a week and a half ago,
“In that water temperature, he should have floated. It could very well mean the body is gone forever,
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“It’s been too long for that temperature and for that depth, unless the water is very deep there – unless we’re talking water that’s greater than 100 feet,
“That body should have been up – unless it can’t float.”
He also noted that nearby there is a channel that is 200 feet deep, which – if he got into – ‘he’s not coming up’.
Tom Wood