Nurse Shark Encounters

[quatin]

My buddy and I were lobstering/spearing fishing with lots of nurse sharks around. Eventually some of them mugged us for the fish bag.

[video=youtube;J3pfHd0SFnU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J3pfHd0SFnU[/video]

 

[Marty Cerven]

Interesting dive setup, is that just regular tanks you using on your kayaks with long lines? Ive never seen that done before, any reason why you dont just wear the tanks or is that so you dont loses your kayaks?

I take it they are a different type of shark to the ones we call "Grey Nurse" in Australia which I just came back from diving with, the ones we have can get to 3-4m in length or were the ones in your video just babies.

 

[quatin]

Interesting dive setup, is that just regular tanks you using on your kayaks with long lines? Ive never seen that done before, any reason why you dont just wear the tanks or is that so you dont loses your kayaks?

I take it they are a different type of shark to the ones we call "Grey Nurse" in Australia which I just came back from diving with, the ones we have can get to 3-4m in length or were the ones in your video just babies.

It's the Brownie Kayak Hookah setup. We're using 80 cf on the kayak with a 60 foot hose. It allows a bit more freedom for when we're digging in reefs for lobsters, especially in crevices that you can sort of climb into to get at the deep bugs.

These are most likely not the "grey nurse" sharks in Australia. They do get to be "4 meters" long though, the ones that were swimming about were just babies. There is one early in the video sleeping under the jacks that might be 2.5 meters. It was the little one that caused the ruckus first and attracted the bigger ones from under the jacks.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Do you lose much air capacity on the long line off a scuba tank? I used to think these kind of setups were just off compressors, first Ive seen a setup like yours. One of my friends has an extra long hose on his normal tank so he can take the gear off and reach more crays. In Australia Im pretty sure all states only allow spear fishing whilst free diving too and crays can only be caught by hand so its a bit trickier.

The sharks we have are also know by a few other names, sand tiger, spotted ragged tooth, blue nurse Sand tiger shark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These are different to the Nurse sharks you have Nurse shark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but the Sand tiger is found in the US.

No idea why the "Grey Nurse" goes under so many different names which makes things confusing.

Surprisingly Wikipedia says the grey nurse shark only gets to 3.4m but Im sure ive seen a few bigger then that.

Here they have it a little different Carcharias taurus (Grey Nurse Shark, Grey Nurse Shark, Sand Tiger, Sand Tiger Shark, Spotted Ragged-tooth Shark, Spotted Raggedtooth Shark) but at south west rocks the majority would be 2.5-3.5m with the odd bigger one, Ive never seen a baby there yet which is odd as its the largest known population in Australia.

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[TD] The maximum size of this species has been given variously as ~3.2 m by Compagno (1984a), ~2.75 m and ~142 kg by Hutchins and Swainston (1986) and ~3.2 m and ~300 kg by Hutchins and Thompson (1983). Catch records from beach meshing in NSW, however, suggest that these sharks may grow to 4.3 m, though this maximum length is doubtful and may be due to a misidentification (Reid and Krough 1992).[/TD]
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Here is the biggest Ive seen still, saw one nearly this size on my last dives there but didn't get as close to it. I still am not 100% this one was a grey nurse but most seem to ID it as one, my estimate is its well over 4m closer to 4.5m.

[video=youtube;PZXrBkS4dfk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZXrBkS4dfk[/video]