Oh my, its a big shark...breath slowly

[Eklipso]

I don't recall the name of the ship, but I have a call into my friend. I recall it being a cargo ship of some sort though sunk in WWII.

EC

P.S. We left from the Northfork of Long Island and traveled about 2 hours til we hit the dive spot.

 

[Gary D.]

I've gone diving numerous times (although I still consider myself a novice) in warm regions of the world. Anyways, after my last trip to Cozumel (I was going to dive in G. Cayman, but didn't), I decided to try some cold water diving.

I went out two days ago off the coast of Block Island for a 95 ft wreck dive. About 5 min into 90-95 feet, I notice a glimmer of movement about 15 feet above me at (max vis - was about 20 feet, may have been even closer). What do I see when I look up, but a BIG shark. I'm not great at identifying sharks, but it was enormous....I couldn't even see its whole body. Normally I don't get nervous around reefs because white tips etc. don't attack people during the day. This was no reef and this was a large predator. I lurked a bit deeper and found refuge along the side of the wreck for a few min with my buddy who also saw the shark. We eventually went along the other side of the wreck, took it easy for 10 min and surfaced (needless to say, we skipped the safety stops, but ascended very slowly and cautiously).

Anyone else see something like this? What do you do?

EC

What do you do? Hummmmmmmmm.

For a starter don't look like a seal or any of their relativies. :54:

Next, I wouldn't look like a female shark either or you just might wish you were a seal. :sappy:

It was still a good dive. Any dive where you make it back to the shore or boat, gain knowledge from and don't blow out your dry suit from an over-load of bodily fluids is a good dive.

Gary D.

 

[SueMermaid]

I vote for sand tiger. They can get *really* big, and are toothy and rather scary looking. They are, however, relatively non-aggressive.* The ones at the aquarium where I volunteer are like gigantic dumb Labradors. There are plenty of them in the Northeast.

*Disclaimer: This doesn't mean you should hang pork roasts from your hands and feet next time you dive to keep them entertained.

 

[H2Andy]

ok... question:

did you see its tail? was it a shark tail (up and down) or a whale tail (side to side)?

sorry for the dumb question

 

[Gary D.]

ok... question:

did you see its tail? was it a shark tail (up and down) or a whale tail (side to side)?

sorry for the dumb question

From the sounds of his post I think tail was the last thing on his mind.

Gary D.

 

[H2Andy]

well... it'd have to be a dire situation indeed, let me tell you what

 

[roakey]

If you saw it from the bottom, you won’t be able to answer these questions, but nevertheless here goes… If it was a Sand Tiger, the teeth would have been very visible (it would have had a *huge* overbite), some teeth even sticking out of the mouth. Most probably, if you saw this you *really* won’t be able to answer anything else . The bottom of the Sand Tiger’s body is basically flat, but its back is very arched, sporting two dorsal fins approximately the same size. The upper lobe of the caudal (tail) fin is laid back; it doesn’t stick up very much. This almost horizontal upper caudal fin combined with the equally sized dorsal fins tells us that it’s a relatively slow moving shark, more of an ambusher than a chaser.

Sharks with tall front and tiny rear dorsal fins are like a sailboat’s centerboard – they keep the shark from side slipping on high speed turns, making it a chaser.

So a story about being able to calmly observe sharks…

I also am an aquarium diver, and we have a couple Sand Tigers in my exhibit as well, along with four Zebras, two Gray Reefs and six Nurses. Getting to dive with over a dozen sharks every other weekend has gotten me quite used to sharks, plus being a shark groupie I know what’s dangerous and what’s not, what to look for to see if they’re getting agitated, etc.

So last summer I was on Maui, and I dove Molokini’s “Shark Condos.” The briefing went like this: We’re dropping off a live boat, directly under us at about 120’ is a large school of reef sharks. If you drop straight down you’ll go into the middle of them, or you can swim over and stay against the wall and look at them…

I drop over the side and look down and there’s a school of at LEAST a hundred sharks milling about below me in a huge ball. Grinning from ear to ear I drop right smack into the middle of them, arrest my descent and start picking out the black tips, white tips, do a quick estimate of the ratio of males to females of each species, etc. After being in seventh heaven for a couple minutes I start looking around for everyone else. There, hugging the wall about 40’ away is the *entire* rest of the group, probably placing bets on how many limbs I was going to loose.

They never knew what they were missing!

Roak

 

[Eklipso]

Roak-
Heh, you have more balls than me bro. I would be on the wall.

I wish I could answer everyones questions, but I can't. As I said, the vis was 20 feet if I'm even close to estimating correctly and mostly what I saw was a long body from directly below it, so all I could make out was a long silvery/white belly. I am familiar with sandtiger shark tails, and Icouldn't make out the dorsal fin from my distance. I also was trying to get close to the wreck for cover at the time, so I didn't take enough time to make a proper examination.

EC

 

[Squid]

I don't know what kind of shark that you saw, but after reading the first few posts referencing whale sharks I did some research and found this gruesome link: :frown2:
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...=whale+shark&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N

 

[Gary D.]

Roak-
Heh, you have more balls than me bro. I would be on the wall.

I wish I could answer everyones questions, but I can't. As I said, the vis was 20 feet if I'm even close to estimating correctly and mostly what I saw was a long body from directly below it, so all I could make out was a long silvery/white belly. I am familiar with sandtiger shark tails, and Icouldn't make out the dorsal fin from my distance. I also was trying to get close to the wreck for cover at the time, so I didn't take enough time to make a proper examination.

EC

Don't be ashamed or hesitant to tell someone your unsure of the unknown.

When I was a snotty nose Navy diver in my teens my buddy and I walked on water once. We had to have walked on it because both of us were dry when we got to the boat. :54:

We were free diving in the Philippine Channel the ships pass through to get into Subic. We used to do the free dives to get rid of the stress from the daily grind.

We were on a wall that ran from around 20' to ? alongside a 2000' bottom. We could do 100' without any problems back then.

On one dive were were at 60 or 70' when something moving caught my eye. Long, wide, big dorsal fin ( heavy heart thumping, me) no head and no tail. At that point it was a Snaggle Puss's, "Exit Stage Left", right or up, who cares but we're out of here. We must have left like 2 scared Squid, ink and all. :help:

About the time we got to the dive boat we realized the only thing that big in those waters, other than a sub, had to be a Whale Shark.

It took us something like an hour to find it again and what a cool site. It was like watching a GreyHound Bus under water.

So Elkipso, If the maucho Navy boys can do it so can you, walk on water. We just didn't want to tell anyone for a while.
We had our tatoos to defend!

Gary D.