A Tale of Two Tales: Part I

So today was sort of epic.  I got my underwater camera 2 days ago and it immediately paid dividends.  The past few days there has been a French film crew at the lab, so today we tried to do all the fun stuff so we could get them some good footage.  Part one of this segment is dedicated to the morning shark dive, which the new volunteers did 2 weeks ago and were able to do again because the film crew wanted us in the shot.  This was the result.

This shot has all Caribbean reef sharks, but there were also some black-nosed sharks around as well.  Caribbean reef sharks can get up to 10 feet long, but these guys ranged from 5-7 feet.  The first time out, someone counted 12 sharks on the dive, but today was even more, the count reaching 16.  People who have been at the lab for years were saying that was the most they'd seen and started saying the film crew was a good luck charm.  We'll have more on that in part 2.

Anyways, Caribbean reef sharks inhabit the tropical waters from Florida down to Brazil and sometimes Bermuda.  They are listed as near threatened because they are overished in many areas and suffer the effects of coral reef degredation in others.  As far as human attacks go, there are only 27 recorded attacks all-time, world-wide attributed to Caribbean reef sharks and none have been fatal.

The sharks that you see here have been "trained" by the lab over the course of about 20 years.  They recognize the sound of our boat engines and gather together to get fed.  We are always very careful to do exactly the same thing every time we put people in the water here.  Everyone is strung out in a line holding a rope, shoulder to shoulder with no space in between.  The staff throws bait a few feet in front of the rope and the sharks feed as they please.  If a shark gets too close to us, we give them a good kick and they back off immediately.  This deliniates our space from their space and this video shows that for the most part the sharks respect that.

 

As you can see, the sharks mostly stay out about 5-10 feet in front of us.  Even when they come in close, just one kick will send them on their way.  They don't get mad and turn around and bite everything in site.  They do actually get into what is widely known as a "feeding frenzy"  but they don't include people in that party.  As soon as the staff stops throwing bait into the water, the sharks relax and just cruise around and we can drop off the line and swim with them for a bit.  You can actually get really really close at this point because the water is only about 20 feet deep so it is pretty easy to dive down and swim around with individual sharks like this guy.

It might look fake, but my camera is awesome.  You can't tell because of camera limitations but I was only about 2 feet behind this one and he just swam like I wasn't even there.

I practically dropped on top of this one and he just went about his merry way.  I got a sweet video swimming behind it for about 30 seconds but it takes a ridiculously long time to upload and I'm tired and it's late and I have to go running tomorrow.  But get excited, because part II of this day made it probably the greatest day of my life.  To be concluded...