As predicted, the El Nina that normally follow El Nino is happening! AND that means great news for Cocos Island diving….let me explain.

Typically when an El Nino happens, temperatures in the waters off Costa Rica and Cocos Island warm.  This causes the schooling hammerhead sharks to drop into deeper murkier waters.  This was the case during our site inspection trip of last March.  We knew this to be the case and expected less than stellar hammerhead sitings.  We could see the sharks, they were definitely there but down deep and out in the murk.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that I was toasty in my wetsuit all week.

BUT THE REALLY GOOD NEWS… is that

La Nina is happening right now and is predicted to continue through the beginning of 2011.  This means that water temperatures will drop below normal and the hammerheads will come shallow and abundant.  I am so excited that I just had to post this….look at all the capital letters and exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a testimonial from a guest who was there just two weeks ago (reprinted from undersea hunter website)

“Cocos is back to it’s old glory!!! There were large schools of hammers at several sites and we had one of the best trips ever!!

After many trips to Cocos since my first trip in 1988, I was worried that the best days of Cocos were behind us….not after this trip!! 50-70 Hammers at a time, schools of 20 + on the back side of Manuelita, large Galapagos Shark and Tiger Shark in the channel and on the night dives!

Dolphins hunting at Dirty Rock, Tigers at Manuelita, great cleaning action at Alcyone!! It’s all here!

Best boat, great crew, excellent service, and great dive guides…..I’ll be back again!”

Oh, yeah…did I mention that we have a full boat charter to Cocos January 18th??????

I have a LITTLE space left.  If you are planning to do Cocos as some point in your life, THIS may be the banner year!!!

Here is the article I just read from Cocos (reprinted from Undersea Hunter) regarding La Nina and the link to NOAA’s article on the same.  Let’s go see us some sharks!!!!!!

“The newest ENSO update was just released, and as evidenced by the incredible diving in Cocos, La Nina continued to gain strength through August.

The data gathered in the month of August offers some clues to the ultimate strength of this La Nina, as well as how long we can expect it to last.

The decreasing sea surface temperatures, as well as the increase in convection in key areas, lend strength to NOAA’s conclusions that “the peak strength of this event will be at least moderate to strong”.

With action heating up on the Island, and La Nina in full swing, the question is how strong and how long is this La Nina? The latest projections claim that it will remain through early 2011.

The next update will be out next month. Make sure to check back for next month’s update, and to read the ENSO update in its entirety please click the link below. “

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf

La Nina is Coming!

TO OUR ADVENTURES!
Mantagirl and Sharkman!!  See you in Cocos!

But….what I have been wondering is: what if you have never before done a shark dive and want to?…..do these posts scare you into or out of it?

My First Shark Dive

I sat down today to write the shark diving page for our website and realized that I have been leading or participating in shark dives for 16 years and so my level of comfort is different (some would say abnormal!) than a first timer.  So I thought back to my first shark dive and I remember it quite well.  It was in Tahiti and we were just a small group of paying divers going out to swim on the reef and feed some sharks.  At this point in my career I had been an instructor for 6 years and had literally thousands of dives but I was nervous as hell.  And I felt stupid about that.  I didn’t sleep well the night before.  I could see the newspaper headlines now, “Honeymooners die in shark attack”.  Everyone would sigh and say, “oh, and they were just starting their new life together, how tragic.”

We got in the water (probably me last, I don’t remember) and during the dive I bet I looked more like a whirling dervish than a diver.  I kept spinning around waiting for the attack that, of course, never came. I just knew those man (and woman) eating great white look alikes (read…..4 foot black tip reef shark puppy dogs) where going to catch me from behind.  I tried to stay in the middle of the “pack” and look like one of strong and young, rather than the old, sick and helpless waiting to be picked off.

I try to think about this when I take people shark diving for the first time in order to empathize with their fears and help alleviate them.  Here are twelve honest realities and thoughts for the newbie about diving with one of the greatest marine apex predators on the planet.

Twelve Tips for First Time Shark Divers

Shark Diver in the clear waters of Tahiti, silver tip shark in the background

1. In 16 years of shark diving and many of those doing the feeding myself, I have only seen two attacks.  One was a shark who took the opportunity to snag an unsuspecting snapper (meaning the fish not a photographer)  and the other…oh well…never mind.  No, seriously, it is so extremely rare that a shark attacks on a shark feeding dive that I would feel safer spending a lifetime in the company of sharks than spending two weeks driving the 405 freeway in Los Angeles.

2. If you want to be attacked by a shark, take a bunch of bait, get in the water and then NOT give it to them, you know, like being a spear fisherman…no thanks!

3. It does NOT matter which side of the boat you get in on.  We used to run our shark dives from 17’ inflatable boats.  When divers would see a shark on one side of the boat, they would make their entry on the other side, three feet away.  Makes you laugh now, but it really happens….a lot!

4. If you are nervous…it’s normal.  You will hear a great deal of joking around on a shark dive, don’t listen to it.  It’s just people who are MORE nervous than you trying to purge their anxiety.

5. Here’s a reality check. You’re not at the top of the food chain anymore… BUT REMEMBER, you are not on a shark’s normal diet either.  There are definitely tastier things in the ocean than soggy white meat covered in a neoprene sponge cake!

6. If it’s your first shark dive and you are unsure, situate yourself in the middle of the group.  You’ll feel safety in numbers being surrounded by your own species.  Sharks tend to me more assertive if you are alone with them.

7. Don’t go out on a shark dive if the visibility sucks.  Clear water allows you to see the sharks and not be so scared.  Having one materialize out of the murk in front of you can be unnerving. And most shark bites are cases of mistaken identity, so murky water can be a factor in that.

8. Tell the dive leader it’s your first shark dive.  They will (should!) give you more attention, re-assure you during the dive and keep you close to them.  Of course, if they are the one feeding you’ll be closer to the bait and the sharks!

9. If you plan to shark dive on your next vacation, read about it but DON’T read every horror story you can get your hands on, that’s just plain DUMB.  Inform yourself.

10. Start Small.  Don’t make your first shark dive with 15 foot Tiger and Bull sharks.  Even the names evoke visions of fear.  Dive with small sharks like black tip or white tip reef sharks.  Then work your way up.

11.Some divers feel safer with a camera in front of them like a barrier.  BUT don’t get in the habit of pushing sharks away with it unless absolutely necessary.  We give a conflicting message if we bait the water for attraction then push them away and say, “no, bad shark”.

12. Dive with someone you trust but also be realistic.  I will go to great lengths to be sure the shark dive is as safe as it can be but I cannot “save” you from a shark .  If you want 100% safe, stay in the boat.

Want to see where we are shark diving next? Check it out at www.live-adventurously.com.

Live Adventurously is a premium provider of SCUBA diving vacations and advice on SCUBA diving travel & the adventure lifestyle.  We provide our friends the experiences and knowledge to live an extraordinary life through adventure.

BULA!  Hello and greetings in Fijian.  I’m in my second favorite office here at 39,000’ winging back from Fiji and on the way to Costa Rica.  In Fiji, we had the opportunity to do one of the most remarkable shark dives we had ever seen.  Eight different species of sharks and LOTS of them came in for a feeding including several large bull and lemon sharks.  It was a packed house so to speak.  I went into detail on this in Part One and Part Deux so check them out if you haven’t.  Now, we’re on our way to dive Cocos Island off the western coast of Costa Rica – a place known as the island of the sharks.

A Load of Bull ..... Sharks

Cocos Island and Fiji – A Study in Shark Diving

Cocos Island is one of the few places in the world where large schools of scalloped hammerhead sharks congregate.  There are also healthy populations of white tip reef sharks and silky sharks as well as other species including whale sharks – the largest fish in the Ocean.  These two places offer a very different opportunity for diving with sharks.  Cocos Island sits like a very remote, relatively pristine beacon for shark populations.  While it is a protected marine park, over the years, it has been illegally longlined but no so much that it has lost its sharks.  Sharks occur in large numbers naturally at Cocos Island because, among other things, there is an intact and productive food web there that can support a large population of apex predators and there hasn’t been rampant overfishing.  In Fiji, it is rare to see sharks on most dives other than the occasional white tip reef shark.  I don’t know what Fiji’s original shark populations would have looked like?  Were there always fewer sharks there or have they been fished out over the years?  I’ve only been diving Fiji since 1998 so I don’t have that answer and this in a nutshell is the problem with shifting baselines.  We don’t know how good it once was so we accept a degraded state as the norm.  In meeting with the chief of Malake Village which derives a lot of its food and most of its cash revenue from spear fishing, he told me that the spearfishermen from the village constantly have sharks around them while they fish.  I took that as a good sign.  There are still some sharks in Fiji.

Unlike Cocos Island, when shark diving in Fiji, the sharks are attracted with bait – in other words, it’s a feed.  This is what I will define as a shark dive – when divers are taken to a dive site where feeding has repeatedly been done and sharks show up in unusual numbers because there is a dinner bell ringing figuratively and sometimes literally.  In some places, this means the difference between seeing one or two sharks swimming around versus a dozen and in other places, it means the difference between not seeing any sharks and seeing 50.  Fiji is the latter.

As you might already imagine, there is controversy around shark dives so I’ll just wade in with a fairly bold statement:

Shark dives are probably the best thing to happen to sharks in the

last 65 million years

Creating Shark Advocates on Shark Dives

The reason for this is simple – sharks are being slaughtered by the tens to hundreds of millions a year.  In less than a human generation, some shark populations have been reduced by 85-90% and we are rapidly losing the rest.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  In fact, sharks haven’t faced this kind of threat since a worldwide extinction event 65 million years ago.  You’ve probably heard of save the whales, save the mountain gorillas and seen the cute panda bear mascot of the World Wildlife Fund.  These are cute, fuzzy and charismatic animals that don’t have the reputation for eating humans.  Thus, they are worth saving and get most of the press and most of the funding.  Conversely, because sharks are seen as a potential threat to humans and in many cases as eating machines of destruction, they’ve been all too easy to kill and difficult to protect.  Until recently, there simply has been no realization much less ground swell to protect sharks.  All you have to do is look at how difficult it was to get the first three sharks species listed on CITIES, the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species and you’ll see the indifference to protecting sharks.  The only way to save sharks is to create shark advocates and the best way to do that is to give people a personal experience with sharks;  A personal, up close, in water experience.  And that is what shark dives are all about.  There we have the opportunity to see that they are definitely wild, amazingly graceful and highly selective.  Maybe the most important thing is that we see that the first large fish that swims past us with a dorsal fin doesn’t immediately try to eat us like in Jaws.  I’ve talked with Wendy Benchley (Peter Benchley’s wife) a number of times and they rue the day they published Jaws and have spent the remainder of their lives trying to undo the PR damage it did to sharks.

A Big Bull Shark, Notice the Hook in Her Mouth

Concerns About Shark Dives

There are a number of concerns about shark dives and in some places, a lot of opposition.  Concerns include

• divers being bitten and injured or killed during a dive
• sharks being attracted to areas where swimmers or surfers are present
• having sharks become dependent for food
• having sharks associate humans with food

Why Do We Need a Set of Best Practices for Shark Dives

All of the above concerns are valid and are why we need a set of Best Practices for shark dives.  This is a set of rules when followed that create a safe environment for both people and sharks.  Over the years I’ve seen some well run shark dives and some that were bone headed beyond belief.  A couple of years ago in the Bahamas, I watched in mixed horror and disbelief as a diver was attacked by a number of Caribbean reef sharks following a shark dive.  I thought, “After all these years, I’m about to see a guy get bitten.”  This all happened because the dive operation would ring the dinner bell literally by banging on the dive ladder on the back of the boat and then throwing in a bucket of bait.  Are you seeing where this is going?  After the feed, as a diver ascended to the surface to exit the water at the dive ladder, the boat pitched on a swell and the ladder banged against the boat making the same sound as the dinner bell.  The sharks were habituated to charge to the back of the boat when they heard this which is exactly what they did – and they found a diver there.  Dinner time!

Fortunately he fended off the sharks for a few long seconds and then was physically yanked from the water by two large Bahamian dive masters.  I watched from underneath as one of his fins drifted down to the bottom.  After having run hundreds of successful shark dives myself, this showed me without a doubt that a set of best practices needs to be established so everybody out there isn’t running off half cocked and doing a bone headed shark dive.  Because when one person gets injured on a shark dive, all the world of good we’ve done to create positive PR for sharks is going to disappear in a flash, aka Steve Irwin or Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man.

What Are Best Practices for Shark Dives

Here are the rules:

• Separate divers and the chum.  NO hand feeding.  Divers in chainmail suits are a bunch of macho crap.  If you need to be in a chainmail suit, you shouldn’t be there – and it sends the wrong message.  Fasten or secure the chum and give the sharks free access.  Set the divers at a safe distance to watch the action.  Sharks shouldn’t be trained that they need to approach humans for food.
• No touching the sharks.  Sharks are wild, powerful, elegant animals.  When we treat them like puppies we are sending the wrong message and somebody ultimately gets bitten.
• Use an absolute minimal amount of bait.  This will attract the sharks but not replace their natural diet and need to hunt.
• Make sure and set up the bait so that the sharks can approach it and circle around without needing to swim through divers.  Keep their path clear.
• Don’t introduce bait near the entry or exit points of the dive boat.
• Conduct the feed at a reasonable depth.  That way if a diver has a problem, they can surface easily.
• Follow the same procedures every time.  This is as important for the divers as it is for the sharks.  Everybody knows what’s expected.

Time for Some Shark Dives

Ready for a shark dive?  I hope so.  When conducted properly, shark dives are a safe way to see what may be nature’s most perfect predator, honed by over 300 million years of hunting prowess and mastery of the Ocean.  And …. It’s a hell of a rush.  See ya down there.

Bad Ass Shark Dives in Fiji

I’d heard a lot about this particular Shark Dive in Fiji over the past couple of years – and I couldn’t wait to come check it out.  As I mentioned in Part One, I’ve been intrigued by sharks for a long, long time …. Thus the handle – Sharkman.  I celebrate sharks, think their cool as hell but never forget they are wild, wild, wild and generally sit at the top of the Ocean realm.  As Mantagirl is fond of saying, when we go back into the Ocean, we reenter the food chain and not necessarily at the top.  In other words, when we go back to the Ocean, we’re on their turf and we better not forget it.  I believe when practiced properly, Shark Dives are fantastic; they’re a wild rush for everyone involved and great positive publicity for sharks … again, when done right.  We’ll get into what it means to be done right later but for now, let’s talk about what this bad ass experience was really like.

Shark Dives in Fiji

I’ve done Shark Dives before when you pull up at the site, tie off at the mooring and not only can see the sharks swirling below the dive boat but can even catch a dorsal fin or two cutting the surface.  On one particular shark dive I was leading in Tahiti, I grinned ear to ear behind my Smiths as the husband of a young Mexican honeymoon couple made his new bride get in the water first.  Que es muy mas macho?  Here in Fiji, it wasn’t like that.

We pulled up to the dive site and the water was calm and relatively clear with 50 foot visibility.  I looked down in anticipation and there were no sharks in sight.  The dive staff gave us a thorough briefing and explained the procedures for the feed.  Incidentally, if you haven’t heard the definition yet, Shark Dives are usually a situation where some kind of bait is introduced into the water to attract sharks in some way; it’s a feed.  Divers get positioned in some way to watch the action, the divemasters bring down the bait, the action begins and things clear out amazingly fast once all the bait is gone.  There is some controversy around this and we’ll talk about it in Part Tres.  It was interesting to note the reactions to the shark dives by other divers …. But we’ll cover that later.  Back to the dive.

The Bistro

Gettin Wild at the Shark Dive

The dive site is called The Bistro and that cracked me up.  It’s just the kind of humor that I love.  I’m not big into making large splashes in the water on my entry at Shark Dives I haven’t done.  So I slowly eased myself off the stern platform of the dive boat and immediately looked down to spot for any sharks that I was sure would be present and there were – none.  Unusual for most shark dives I’ve done but I later talked with one of the divemasters and found out that since this feed is done deeper than most, at about 85 feet, the sharks stay down there.  They don’t bother to come up shallower because they don’t get fed there nor is the bait out in the open as it comes down from the surface.  The bait is put into large plastic trash cans that are tied shut and transported down and not opened until they are at the specific site where the feed takes place.

So What’s It Really Like on Shark Dives?

All the divers descend together and head down to the site.  The feed takes place at the base of a pinnacle which has some benefits.  There’s a rope that’s about 60’ long that’s anchored to the bottom at its ends.  The divers are aligned along the line and can grab it if they want.  It’s not like it magically keeps the sharks on one side and the divers on the other but it’s actually an important piece of organization.  It keeps divers from drifting into the action which takes place 15’ in front of them and also creates an arrangement that the sharks understand and follow from dive to dive.  This line of divers creates a wall of bubbles that most sharks aren’t keen on swimming through.  So the sharks form a swirl out in front of the divers as they come in to take some bait, then roll off and sweep back around for more.  The pinnacle in back of the divers keeps sharks from swimming back behind the divers which in this particular case is important because there are some sharks that you don’t want behind you.

I’d heard that there were a number of species at this shark site, but as I descended and came over the pinnacle, I was blown away.  Immediately, I made out Pacific nurse sharks swimming 50’ below and there were A LOT of them, and man were they big – in the 7’ range.  In the end, I counted 8 different species of sharks which was amazing.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I noticed a number of other different shapes and sizes but my attention was quickly fixed on a few massive shadows down deeper.  Those were bull sharks and while I’ve seen bulls before, they seemed particularly big.  As I got closer, and they got closer, I found out they weren’t big, they were frickin’ HUGE.  They were massive and moved through the masses of fish and other sharks with an authority that was easy to see.  Nothing else except other bulls would swim near them.  Later, one of the divemasters would share with me that he had seen a bull shark snap a giant trevally into two pieces on another dive.  I’ve never even heard of that before.

Sharks and More Sharks

On a bit of a side note, it was fascinating which species of sharks were NOT involved in coming into the feed but stayed way out on the periphery.  Normally, white tip reef sharks are like feral dogs and just swarm a feed.  Gray reef sharks are like a pack of wolves at a feed and are usually involved in large numbers.  In this case, both were noticeably absent at the dinner table.  And I am certain it was because of the abundant bulls that would have grabbed a white tip or even a gray and made a hasty meal.  White tip reef sharks are slow and apparently know it.  Even the silver tips weren’t interested in getting involved and those are pretty big sharks.  The only sharks that actually came in on the bait were the abundant Pacific nurse sharks, the bulls and the large lemon sharks.  All the other sharks got the hell out of the way.

Once all the divers are arranged along the line, the divemasters bring down the bait.  Its organized chaos on a shark dive and not just because of the sharks.  There is inevitably a massive cloud of fish on a shark dive but this was different.  There was a STORM of fish.  I’ve never seen a larger collection of greater trevally in my life – they are the biggest members of the jack family and large, awesome predators in their own right.  Here they showed up en masse with thousands of other fish.  They created a literal cloud around the bait that was difficult to see through  ….  You would look at this swirling mass of fish with sharks entering into it and coming out.  Once the bait is opened that’s the kind of instant action that you see.  These fish and sharks know what’s coming and it’s a massive pile on.  It’s kind of like in college when the free taco bar opened.

Keeping Your Head (and fingers and toes) on Shark Dives

It’s important to be level headed on a dive like this whether you just want to check out some sharks or are looking to produce imagery of a lifetime.  There’s so much going on, you need to be aware of what’s happening all around you.  Typically, you’ll be kneeling down and just checking out the action.  If you’re producing imagery – still or video – you’ll want to understand the flow of the sharks so you can position yourself in the best spot to catch the action you want to capture.  Have in mind some of the images you want to capture before you hit the water and let serendipity help you produce the rest

The action was intense.  I spent the dive watching and anticipating the action, framing shots and keeping an eye out.  I also had a divemaster next to me on both dives looking out which was a good thing.  Twice, I had bulls swim up on me from the side and I didn’t see them until the last minute.  One narrowly turned just before slamming into my camera.  But did I get a heck of a shot.

Moment Before Impact with MR Bull Shark

End of a Shark Dive

At the Shark Dive in Fiji, they feed by hand which I’m not at all crazy about.  Once the bait is gone, it’s amazing to see how quickly the action fades.  It’s like a plug is yanked from the wall and all the power goes out.  Wild.  You begin to ascend along the pinnacle to the top at 20’ where you do a long safety stop.  As you look down into the blue, occasionally you can see the shape of a silver tip or lemon shark passing below.  When you consider that if you saw even that on a typical dive it would be a big deal, the shark dive in Fiji quickly frames itself as something wicked good.

More on shark dives to come ….

MASSIVE bull sharks

There are certain things in life that produce an automatic, deep in your gut, visceral reaction and being borne down on by a ¾ ton toothed apex predator the size of a Yugo is one of them.  On the way to write this blog, I was attacked by a coconut.  It fell out of a tall palm tree with a violent thunk right next to me.  It hit the ground so hard, it cracked the thick shell and coconut juice sprayed out all over the place – but somehow, I just didn’t feel the same menace that I did earlier this morning.

Sharks, Sharks and More Sharks

I just got back from one of the most amazing, intense Shark Dives I’ve ever done.  After having run Shark Dives in Tahiti for almost two years and shark diving around the world, this was truly something special here in Fiji.  WHOA!  Eight species of sharks – blacktip reef sharks, white tip reef sharks, oceanic black tips, gray reef sharks, silver tips, pacific nurse sharks (that were HUGE), pacific lemon sharks and MASSIVE and I mean MASSIVE bull sharks.  I’ve seen bull sharks before but never anything like this.  There were at least a dozen and they were 10-12’ long and had the girth of a small compact car.  And they were curious – VERY curious.

Mantagirl and I have been Shark Diving for about 15 years now and I’ll be the first to say that its one of our favorite things.  Sharks are magnificent, WILD animals that have been honed through over 300 million years of evolution.  They survived the last great extinction on earth that killed off the dinosaurs with over 75% of the rest of life on the planet and they have thrived since – until recently …. More on that later.  Their diversity is extraordinary!  They live in every sea on the planet, from the tropics to the arctic and Antarctic and in shallow waters to bone crushing depths that never see a ray of light and live in perpetual darkness.  Their constituent member species span across numerous families.  Yes, amazingly diverse.

I’ve always been fascinated by sharks and judging by the things I read and people I talk too, you probably are too.  They are graceful and elegant, strong and cunning and in some cases, dangerous.  And that’s probably the big deal, because in a world where we’ve methodically eliminated risks to humanity, sharks still sit out there on the edge of our dreams.  It’s really quite simple; when we get back into the water, we’re no longer at the top of the food chain.  It may also be one great predator admiring another.  Who knows?

Readers Digest 300 Million Year History of Sharks

Whatever the answer, we’re taught from a young age that sharks are things to be feared.  The reality is this: there are almost 400 species of sharks in the world and only about 40 species have ever been recorded biting a human and only about three are actually considered man eaters.   The man eaters, especially the great white shark get a lot of press of course.  Unfortunately nothing sells ad space like a shark attack.  This has created a public image of all sharks being mindless killing machines.  In reality, recent groundbreaking research on great white sharks show them to be anything but – they are in fact very calculating.  And while they are apex predators, we aren’t on their menu.  The side affect of all of this public perception is that we have allowed sharks to be wiped out from our Ocean in epic proportions.  What the last global extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs couldn’t do, we’ve accomplished in the last 50 years.  And that’s why Shark Diving is so important.

Why Does Shark Diving Kick Ass

Shark Diving is a rush, it’s a massive blast of adrenaline, it kicks ass.  But in addition to that, it’s a critically important educational tool if we are going to save our sharks.  By getting in the water and seeing for ourselves that we aren’t going to be immediately eaten by the first thing with a dorsal fin that swims by, we knowingly or unknowingly just became ambassadors for our finned friends.  We see them for what they are – very wild, powerful, graceful, necessary and generally unthreatening.  And if we want to be diving with them 10 and 20 years from now, we’ve got to make this change.

More on Shark Diving to come …..