Your good experiences with sharks

[Cacia]

yes, we know how you are...all your little methods to get them closer! Someday, I will have the nerve to do that.

I grew up in the summer of the movie Jaws with a dad that forced me to dive in the Caymans with the family, whether I wanted to or not....because by golly he had paid and I was diving come hell or high water!

Now, I love seeing sharks. I admit, I still hear the music, still have some fear...but it is so exciting to conquer the fear! Blue Corner did it for me! Here are some of my favorite shots....some of the biggest thrills were when they turn away, last second.

My very favorite experience, honestly, is sneaking up nose to nose to sleeping white tips lying on their bellies in a cavern near my house, off baby barge. They watch you and their eyes are so funny, rolling around following your every move. You really have to do this by yourself, and this is one way I get seperated on this drift for the last third, because I go over there to poke in and check them out while everyone else continues on. It will be great when JB is home, cause he doesn't mind waiting for me outside...nobody else is willing.

Here is my gummy "man eating" friend who is very reliably always there, taking a siesta. Check out his little beady eye....
Sometimes we find big fat pregnant sharks....This guy was taken with a wide angle, so I was about two feet or so off his nose. His teeth are just are not that impressive!

 

[cdiver2]

yes, we know how you are...all your little methods to get them closer! Someday, I will have the nerve to do that.

I grew up in the summer of the movie Jaws with a dad that forced me to dive in the Caymans with the family, whether I wanted to or not....because by golly he had paid and I was diving come hell or high water!

Now, I love seeing sharks. I admit, I still hear the music, still have some fear...but it is so exciting to conquer the fear! Blue Corner did it for me! Here are some of my favorite shots....some of the biggest thrills were when they turn away, last second.

My very favorite experience, honestly, is sneaking up nose to nose to sleeping white tips lying on their bellies in a cavern near my house, off baby barge. They watch you and their eyes are so funny, rolling around following your every move. You really have to do this by yourself, and this is one way I get seperated on this drift for the last third, because I go over there to poke in and check them out while everyone else continues on. It will be great when JB is home, cause he doesn't mind waiting for me outside...nobody else is willing.

Here is my gummy "man eating" friend who is very reliably always there, taking a siesta. Check out his little beady eye....
Sometimes we find big fat pregnant sharks....This guy was taken with a wide angle, so I was about two feet or so off his nose. His teeth are just are not that impressive!

We will have to do Palau sometime and get off the wall...just the two of us.

The worst time I had with sharks was on Osprey reef. There was a real tiny Japanese girl on the trip with a even smaller camera, and she had a thing for sharks. Every time we saw sharks she would put the camera out at arms length and charge straight at it. Inevitably the sharks would take off and I would get really P...off not being able to get a photo. On our last dive I saw a white tip sleeping on the sand in a cul de sack channel, I looked around and she had not seen it. So I sank to the bottom and started a crawl along the bottom until I was about 4-5 from its head when from out of nowhere came the Japanese dive bomber going straight for it. The shark and I came up at the same time, me to my knees and the shark heading straight for me, I ducked the shark did an about face right in front of me and took off in another direction. I would have drowned her but I needed to change my pants.

Nice photos

 

[simonspear]

I guess I've been lucky but I've been up close with a number of different shark species. Grey and Caribbean Reef, Blacktip, Whitetip, Lemon (fleeting sighting), Nurse, Lepoard, Blue (caged), Bamboo and Whale Shark (now that's BIG). I've seen Basking Sharks from a boat, and even seen one breach, but I've not had a chance to actually get into the water with them yet - there's always next year!

Every sighting has been an amazing experience and I've never felt in danger or threatened. However, I've not seen a truly big Predatory shark yet. Until I see a Bull or Tiger or White face to face without a cage then.... well I'm sure you all know what I'm saying! Hopefully when I do see one, it will be another amazing experience to add to all the others before it

Cheers, Simon

 

[wreckchick]

I see sharks all the time. Nurse, Dusky, and Bulls mostly and they don't bother me unless I've attached dead fish to myself which has been a frequent phenomenon recently. I wasn't at all happy to have an 8' Bull follow me back to boat to drop off a fish I'd speared. When I don't have dead fish, I love them!

Rachel

 

[Code Monkey]

So, I was diving with my family in Fiji and we were drifting through some cool boulders. One of the dive masters gives the shark signal and, when I look, I see 4 of 'em. They're doing that cool, swim-in-a-circle thing that sharks are wont to do. When I give the OK sign and hold 4 fingers up, the dive master shakes his head and holds-up eight fingers. We held on for 20 minutes, just watching them circle in the current, looking for food.

When I got back on the dive boat, grinning ear-to-ear, I told the dive master that those grey reef sharks were awesome. He told me that that was great but that I was wrong. Those, he told me, were bull sharks...

 

[Gradual Ascent]

Sharks I have encountered:


I have had the following nice encounters:

TIGER SHARK - small juvi - coffin's patch Fl Keys
BLACKTIP SHARK - Looe Key FL
BULL SHARK - Keys and Bahamas
CARIBBEAN REEF SHARK - Fl Keys & Bahamas (a bunch of them)
NURSE SHARK - all over the keys - shy My wife had a head on collision with one while snokeling in very shallow water. It was quite funny .. both bolted.

Matagota bay Texas, got bumped while wade fishing eek. Got to the boat swiftly..

 

[isurus]

I've dived with 25 species so far, with pretty much each experience being more awesome than the last. here's some (bad) pix of the last one.

 

[packman]

My latest shark encounter occurred when I was diving the Aeolus off the NC coast. This was a cable layer that was sunk as an artificial reef. At one point, I went inside the cable storage room and there were about a half dozen sand tiger sharks circling around inside the room. The sharks were all in the 5-6 ft range and just circled around as divers came and went taking pictures. This was the first time I had seen sharks on this wreck and, in my excitement, forgot to double-check the settings on my camera. Unfortunately, most of my pictures came out blurry. Here's a couple of my better shots.