Blog by Eddy
(http://www.yellowtangsoftware.com/purpleink/blogs/index.php?blog=5&cat=17)
My First Shark Dive
Today, Wednesday the group decided to do a shark dive as an additional excursion. This was not included in the package at CocoView. Since I had never done a shark dive I decided go along. Four others in our group were coming too (Cindy, Dina, Craig and Christina), as other people from the resort.
The shark dive was run by a separate company: Waikuha Adventure Diving. Their operations were located about 30 mins from CocoView by car. The trip to their location was somewhat painful. We had to carry all our equipment on to the water taxi that takes you inland. That included Nitrox tanks, since they only provide air tanks at the shark dive place. Then we had to take a van to Waikuha, which was located in not-so-well-known and poorly maintained resort, which name escapes my memory. It seemed that the shark diving operation was the thing that kept the place alive. The facilities there were poor, there were no proper bathrooms or even running water for any kind of rinsing.
The Orientation
The operation was ran by an Italian emigre (his name escapes my mind), who was a lawyer back in Italy, so the shark diving operation was up his alley ;). The story goes that he was visiting Roatan and was told that fisherman always sighted sharks at a location called "Cara a Cara", which is Spanish for "face to face". From then on he managed to atract sharks every time he chummed the waters, eventually he started to bring people along for his dives with sharks and that's how he started his business. On the way to the dive site, he said that he did at least 2 dives a day, every day, bringing an average of 20 people in each dive. That is $90 per head, not bad business.
The orientation was a 30 minute briefing of the procedures and rules. The site is located at 70 ft of water with a 10ft wall surrounding one side of it. After descending with a line we were to stay at bottom, forming 2 rows with the wall behind us. The people in the front row would be kneeling and the people in the back would be standing up. If conditions were adequate, the sharkmaster would tell us that is ok to swim among with the sharks. The dive was to last about 30 minutes. By the end of the dive, the sharkmaster was to open a bait bucket underwater. We had to come back to our two-row stationary location when this was done. We were told that there were also two local residents at the site: a Nassau grouper and a green moray eel.
The Dive
To reach the dive site we boarded their boat, which was not designed for diving. It had seats on both sides (starboard and port), but no place to put stuff away. So once you picked your location on the boat, you couldn't move around, so you had to make sure that all your equipment was setup and ready to go. We donned our wetsuits and assembled our gear back at the dock. I wore 2 lbs of extra weight to make sure I could stay at the bottom. The space was kind of tight at the boat. We were about 20 people total, plus the sharkmaster and a videographer, we were 22.
The sharkmaster was wearing chain-mail gloves. He was the person who was going to handle the bait bucket. In the picture below he is driving the boat towards Cara a Cara. The dive site was located about a mile off the coast. I was impressed at how he was able to find the dive site. Although it was marked by a buoy, I couldn't see it from a distance. I don't think he had GPS on this small boat.
The weather was overcast and rainy. Once we arrived to the dive site, the assistant threw in the bait bucket. I did a backwards entry into the water because it was the most convenient way. There was a little bit of current at the surface, but I could swim along the line without holding it. Most of the others did hold it. Once in the water, I could see the sharks circling around already. It was a sensation of excitement, awe and a little bit of fear.
Once every body in the group was at the bottom, the sharkmaster signaled us that was ok to swim with sharks. Sometimes he doesn't allow this based on current conditions or behavior shown by the sharks. Cindy, my buddy, was eager to photograph the sharks and leapt to the ocassion. She is the one that appears in one of my video clips with a Nikonos V camera. Other people decided to stay behind with the safety of the wall on their backs ...
We continued to swim around with sharks for a good 10 minutes at least. The sharks were ready good at swiming around us, although, once I felt a little bump. We were told not extend our limbs and keep them close to our bodies.
After looking at the pictures that I took, I realized that I had the wrong settings. My ISO setting was set at 50, so my pictures were coming out dark and you could barely see the impact of the strobe. Also a wide angle converter would have been useful. Sometimes the shark couldn't fit inside the frame because I was so close to it.
We continued to swim with the sharks and I was trying to get close-up pictures. This one is one of the closest one I got. The shark was no more than 4 ft away. You could see some effect of the strobe. However, the picture was still too dark because I had pick a low sensitivity, ISO 50. For these kinds of shots (wide angle with fast moving subjects), now I know, I should have used at least ISO 100 or even go with ISO 200 or higher, if I didn't want to show any movement. I was mostly shooting at shutter speed of 1/60 sec. Also, I could have used shutter speed priority (S), as showing motion was the only variable I wanted to play with.
I also was looking up to try to take shar pictures from below. Unfortunately, sharks swim so fast that there is no time to "frame" a picture, you are lucky to get the shot. It is almost like shooting pictures at a sports event. A faster shutter response could have been useful. This is one of area where SLR cameras shine, and point and shoots lack.
After taking many still pictures, I switch to video mode to capture some of the shark behavior. Notice how fast the sharks swim and turn. In this video, my buddy Cindy is also a protagonist, taking pictures as well.
Some people in our group also ventured out to take pictures. Here's Craig taking a picture of a shark ... I took the picture on the other side.
Frenzy Starts: Opening the Bait Bucket
Almost at the end of the dive, the sharkmaster instructed us to go back to our "huddle formation", back by the wall and stay there. He was to open the bait bucket. Not only sharks wanted to be in the action. There were also lots of Nassau groupers, black groupers, and jacks. Strangely, the sharks did not eat them! We were told that the sharks are really lazy and that they go for sick or already dead animals. So the stereotype that (all) sharks are "killers" is very wrong. Sharks are the scavengers of the ocean.
The sharkmaster used a metal pointer to release the cover from the bucket. He was keeping his distance from the it and was doing it very carefully. He was ready to swim away at any moment. As he was doing this, the sharks were circling around faster and faster. The sharkmaster had several failed attempts to open the bucket, but he finally did it after 3 tries ...
[I have a video clip of the shark frenzy, but it is too big (over 100 Mb). I will post it at a later date]
When the Bait was Gone
When the bait was gone, all of the sudden the sharks were gone in a flash. Later I learned that this particular dive site was a crossroads of deeper water, so sharks come and go thru this point. The site by itsef had local residents as well. There was a big Nassau grouper (3ft long) relaxing at the cleaning spa and a green moray eel coming out of his hole after the party was over.
After the show was over, we were told to return to the boat. Since I had nitrox and plenty of air left, I stayed behind and let the rest of the group go back to the boat first. It was going to be a logjam, since we had to do our safety stop and the boat was not the easiest to get into. So I spent about 7 more minutes at the bottom, taking pictures of the grouper being cleaned.
I also had the chance to have the moray eel to "myself" as everybody body else was returning to the boat. The assistant, who was filming the whole event, was around patrolling the area, so I was ok. Almost when I was ready to go to the surface I witnessed a behavior that I had never seen before: a gree moray eel yawning. At that time I didn't know what it was, it didn't seem that he was attacking me, as I wasn't very close or harassing him.
Green Moray Yawning?
I later looked it up on the Internet and found a couple of references to moray eels yawning, but only a few. I have to ask a marine biologist some day ;)
After the dive, we returned to the dock and watched the video of the dive, which was for sale. They have perfected this so much that they were able to come up with the video in record time: no more than 30 min for the editing. They must have done this before ;)
The facilties at this location were poor. There were no proper bathrooms, other than the ones used by the staff, and they were not the cleanest. We tried to rinse our equipment with a shower by the dock. The water was coming out brown. So he had to wait until we were back to CocoView. We took the van back and eventually the water taxi back to CocoView. We got back at about 1:00 in the afternoon, in time for lunch and the afternoon boat dive at 2:00pm.