tekkydiver
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Palm Beach Dive Thread
- Thread starter Divin'Papaw
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OP
Glad to see it’s not just me that has a hard time IDing sharks!
Nurse & Lemons are pretty obvious. I assume tigers, hammerhead & GWS would be too if I ever saw one, which I unfortunately have not. But reef, bull, spinner, sandbar, and dusky can all look so similar!
Nurse & Lemons are pretty obvious. I assume tigers, hammerhead & GWS would be too if I ever saw one, which I unfortunately have not. But reef, bull, spinner, sandbar, and dusky can all look so similar!
OP
Using the very helpful links @PBcatfish shared, I believe videos 1 & 3 are spinners and video 2 is a bull.
Belzelbub
Contributor
Agreed on most of those, but bull and sandbar stand out a bit. A smaller bull is easily confused, but full size bulls are broader and bulkier.
Sandbars do look like the others except for the dorsal and pectoral fins. They are ridiculously large compared to the body. That's always been a giveaway for me.
johndiver999
Contributor
75 ft vis in 100 today with moderate or strong current
I rewatched video 2, you're probably right. Funny how it was creeping up behind those divers. Too bad you cut the video, it would have been funny to see their reactions if they suddenly noticed a bull 10 ft behind them haha.
Remember that one dive we did where a small reef shark kept circling around and coming up behind us? That thing scared the crap out of me the first time, it was so dang close.
Belzelbub
Contributor
HalcyonDaze
Contributor
No, that was a Caribbean reef shark as well. Bulls are pretty easy to ID; between the bulk and the swimming style they look like weightlifters strutting out of the gym.
Bull sharks in foreground and background; Caribbean reef shark second one from front with tail pointed towards camera.
Bull shark.
Carcharhinids in general are the "generic gray 4-door sedan" line of sharks; you've really got to see them all in person. We had a long-running debate on which deep ledge summer sharks were silkys versus duskys; I really only got that down when actually seeing them next to each other.
OP
I disagree. Even the guides that dive all the time agreed the shark in my video #2 was a bull. To me, it looks exactly like the photos you shared of bulls. It even acted completely differently than the other sharks.
Let's just say we agree on one thing. They are all sharks.
Behavior contributes heavily to me calling a shark a bull. They tend to be among the most aggressive & thuggish. I read somewhere that they have one of the highest testosterone levels of any animal on the planet.I disagree. Even the guides that dive all the time agreed the shark in my video #2 was a bull. To me, it looks exactly like the photos you shared of bulls. It even acted completely differently than the other sharks.
Let's just say we agree on one thing. They are all sharks.
I have sometimes seen them shoot straight up, completely out of the water, with the front end of a large fish falling on one side of them & the tail section falling on the other side. After that happened twice inside of 15 minutes within about 50 feet of the 12 foot skiff I was fishing out of, I decided it was time to go in for the day. I think that was probably the only time in 50+ years that I have been spooked off of fishing by anything other than terrible weather.
I had another time that I was fishing out of a 17' center console & the other guy in the boat hooked up on a large fish in sharky waters. He loosened the drag & we chased the fish for about a mile, then he tightened up & brought the fish boat side. Just as the fish got close, 2 bulls, that had followed us, made a b-line for the boat from two different angles. They hit the side of the boat so hard that the 250ish pound guy in the front of the boat got knocked off his feet. We lost that fish to 2 determined sharks that I assume to be bulls.
Makos, great whites, tigers, hammers & threshers are also known to be aggressive. I have one reliable report of a large mako biting the propeller of a running outboard & stalling it. The guy had pictures on his phone. He was a well respected tournament fisherman.
When the water gets chummed up & bloody, the sharks wake up and get frisky. In other conditions, I have dove in their proximity countless times with no issues.
Just north of Lake Worth Inlet, is a well known breeding spot for spinners. That may be part of the reason why so many of that type tend to be in this area.
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