Saturday, September 15, 2007

Diving with some sharks

One of the fun dives advertised on our dive trip was a "shark feeding". Which seemed exciting to me since I had only seen like one shark in my life before. The idea was that a big group of divers would go down and watch sharks come and eat some fish put out to attract them. The prospect didn't seem too scary, since it wasn't like we were expecting great whites or something. Just some average sharks that hang out around these reefs. It got more exciting when prior to THAT one dive, like minutes before getting in the water, the crew came around with an extra release form, in addition to all the stuff we had to sign getting on the boat. This one basically said diving with sharks was dangerous, and although the divemaster assured us nobody had ever been hurt when doing this, there was nevertheless a risk of injury or DEATH (haha he said in a comical way so everybody laughed.)
So basically the setup was the entire boat goes down and sits on some rocky coral area shaped like an ampitheater. In retrospect, I probably should have picked out my seat more carefully in case I woulda plunked my butt down on a deadly poisonous scorpionfish. Then a big steel can filled with giant fish heads is lowered down and on a cue, a divemaster releases the fish heads, which float up on a rope and then the sharks are come over and go crazy eating it. I got down there first so I could get the closest seat to the action to try to get some good pics.
After the feeding was over, two morays popped up right where all the stuff was going on, probably thinking "what the HELL is going on?!" On the way back from the dive apparently a remora got confused in all the commotion and decided to hitch a ride with me instead of a shark (see pic by my buddy.)
After I got back home I was looking for pictures from others of this shark feeding on the web and googled "MIke Ball Spoilsport " (the boat name) and "shark feeding". And got THIS link. Skip past the part about the woman who died while diving on the same boat to the part at the end about the Spoilsport instructor who "suffered severe injuries in a shark feeding incident." Guess feeding shark isn't that much of a laughing matter after all.

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