Sharks Up Close and Personal

Here we see a Caribbean Reef shark, eying my camera.  Or perhaps, eying me.  The focus is all wrong because the eye is blurry.  However, I thought it was an interesting shot nonetheless.

Shark making eyes with me.

Diving with Tiger Sharks

Colleen is enthusiastic about diving with sharks. After diving with the reef sharks, she is now eager to see the bigger animals.  And watching divers in the water with tiger and lemon sharks has given her something to look forward to.  Last night, I asked her, “Would you want to do a night dive with the tiger sharks that are 12-15 feet long?”

Her response? “Yes, they will be easier to see at night if they are big!”

I love her.  I don’ t know that I’ll dive tiger beach at night with her though. I may just have to sit that one out!

Shark Week! Propoganda

I am disappointed, though not surprised, to see that the Discovery Channel’s Sharkweek programming is just another sensationalized series of programming showing the sharks as mindless eating machines.  Sure, they pay lip service to the fact that sharks have more to fear from us than we do of them, but they have not shown (that I’ve seen) the horrible practice of finning the shark (cutting the fins and throwing the live animal into the water to drown) for profit.

Instead, the programming is chock full of “mindless” sharks attacking chumsicles and occasionally biting on the chainmail covered diver who is on top of the chumsicle.  Yes folks, sharks eat frozen fish and if you are touching the frozen fish while a dozen sharks are eating at it, you are likely to be “Mindlessly” bitten.  Just as if you stick your hand the food bowl of a dozen dogs, you are likely to get that hand bitten.

When you dive with the tiger sharks, you can expect your camera to be bumped by the shark. This is not news to a scuba diver.  But, the discovery channel makes it out like the cameraman was under attack and had to defend himself from the animal.  Most underwater photographers are happy to have a shark bump the camera, because it means you get an awesome picture!

As you watch these programs, pay particular attention to the videos of the person inside the shark cage. Often you’ll see a shot that was clearly taken from outside the cage. Then ask yourself, “If its so dangerous, who the hell is taking the video of the guy in the cage?”  And, no. There is not a second cage.  Its just a cameraman outside the cage, filming the guy in the cage, so it looks like the shark is so dangerous a cage is necessary to be in the water.  Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against people being in cages if they are afraid of sharks.

I just wish the programming were a bit more shark friendly and a bit less shark phobic.

Starfish

The “typical” way to shoot a starfish is to focus right down on top of it, so you can see all five arms.

Instead of shooting an ordinary shot, I decided it would be nice to get a picture with the background of “eel grass.”  In this way, it appears as though my starfish is sitting on the lawn.   Enjoy.

Starfish on the grass

Getting Scuba Certified/Fear of Scuba Diving/Resort Courses

A lot of people are introduced to scuba diving through a “Discover Scuba” class while they are vacationing in the tropics. In fact, this is probably how most divers took their first breath of compressed air.  This explains why such courses exist – without them, we’d have far fewer scuba divers and an industry that would not be as robust as it is.

However, by no stretch of the imagination does this suggest that a “discover scuba” or “resort course” is a good way for you to be introduced to scuba diving.  In fact, I believe that such courses wind up scaring a high percentage of divers away from diving – people who could be enjoying the sport as much as me, or more, had they only been properly introduced to the sport!

The reason is quite simple. A “discover scuba” class typically consists of a short class where you learn the basics, followed by an introduction to the equipment and some short pool experience. Then, you are off to the boat and ready to jump into 30 feet of water to see what you can see in the Ocean!

That is all well and good if you are the type of person who a) LOVES the water, b) blindly trusts that they can breath under water with the scuba equipment and c) are quick to learn what to do and are not prone to panic if you make a mistake, or your  mask floods while you are thirty feet under water.

If a, b or c does not apply to you, then your “introduction to Scuba” coudl wind up being an uncomfortable and even scary experience, tuning you off of the sport forever.  I have heard from dozens of people, “Oh, I tried that. I could not do it.”  “Oh, I tried Scuba and it was too scary.”  “Oh, I did that, and it was terrible.”  Invariably, these people were turned off of scuba because of the resort course that they took, figuring it would be “fun” to try scuba diving.

Unfortunately, trying scuba is usually fun in only one place – 4 feet of pool water, when you drop to your knees and take that first breath. Wow, that is neat!  It is also fun when you swim to the deep end, clear your ears, and hang out at the bottom of the pool fo ra few minutes.  Wow, tha tis neat!

What is not so fun is moving immediately to the open ocean where you cannot easily “stand up” if you freak out, or decide for any number of reasons that you want to “abort” breathing from your regulator.   Perhaps you’re going to sneeze, or throw up, and you just want to get out of the water – easy enough to do in the pool, not so easy to do in the ocean.

The best way to learn to scuba dive is to simply get yourself certified. A “discover scuba” course is simply a way to entice you to get certified. And, unfortunately, it has the reverse effect on way too many people. So, rather than “discover scuba” find your local dive shop (they are located even in the middle of the country where there is no ocean, just look) and sign up for a scuba certification course (there are several agencies, but in the end you’ll probably go with whatever the diveshop teaches).  Maybe they will let you try the gear in the pool even before you pay for the course.  Certification requires three things – class work (you take quizzes and tests until you pass them) “confined water dives” which is to say, the pool sessions, and “open water dives” which are conducted in the ocean, a lake or a quarry.

The pool sessions are critical. Spending several hours in the pool over the course of several days, is what many people need to “bond” with their equipment.  Our brains don’t naturally trust that we can breathe underwater, and so there is naturally a bit of anxiety attached to the process. Some people are more anxious than others. But most people who are acclimated to the process by spending sufficient time in the pool, get bored of the pool and want to see the fish or the wrecks that makes scuba diving interesting to them.  Unfortunately, without sufficient time in the pool, many people are just not ready to go into the ocean and this ruins their first ocean experience because they go from pool to ocean in the course of a couple of hours. Too much, too fast for too many people.

For me, I did the classes and confined water diving in the northeast. I then went to Jamaica with a “referral” form, that let me complete the course in the crystal clear warm waters of the Caribbean where I completed my two “open water” dives (actually, they made me start in the pool again and do all of the skills, just to make sure I was ready for the ocean) and voila!, I was a certified diver.

I highly recommend this approach. While I know one certified diver who “quit” diving because he was never at ease in the water, I know far more people who never got certified because of a bad experience had while doing the “ocean dive” in a “discover scuba” course.  I know of nobody (they exist, of course) who went to get certified and did not complete the certification successfully.  And so, I suggest the certification route. Putting aside that it will make you a safer more knowledgable diver, it will vastly increase your chance of having a pleasant open water dive in the ocean and believe me – a good dive goes a long way to make you want more of the same!

There will be bad dives in the future of any diver. But with experience, the negative experience can be dealt with, and even if it is not dealt with, the positive experiences tend to outweigh the negative, and keep divers diving – you just need to have those positive experiences “in the bank” for them to outweigh the bad – and if you lack experience and have a bad one immediately upon entering the ocean after “discover scuba” you may very well wrongly assume scuba is not for you when all you needed was more time in the pool to get used to everything!

Parrot Fish versus Sea Urchin

I was doing a shallow dive, and noticed this Parrot Fish going after something. I am pretty sure its an urchin. There were no other players on the field, so I guess the spines were somewhat protective….

 

The urchin is in the lower left.

Fish goes in for a nibble.

Some soccer action and the Fish is moving the Urchin around.

Fish, recognizing the photographer, smiles.

Happy Shark Photographs

Here are a few more shots of the sharks we saw in the Bahamas. The photos of me were taken by Colleen and are the first pictures she has taken underwater with the dSLR camera.  So far, both of us are shooting as if we had a large point and shoot digicam, but we’re taking fun pictures nonetheless!

David and the Shark

David says "Cheese!"

Shark swimming by

The above photo is among my favorites. I just like the way that both pectoral fins are showing as well as the eye.

Sharks and More Sharks.

Well, I’ve written about going to the Bahamas to dive with the sharks, and I’ve posted a few photos, but I thought more pictures of the animals would be appreciated.  People have been asking, “Are those great white sharks?” And the answer is, no. They are carribbean reef sharks. MAYBE they are grey reef sharks, but I don’t know if that is the case.

Other people ask, “Are those man eating sharks?” and the answer is, No.  They are reef sharks. There really are no “man eating sharks” if by “man eating” one means a species that regularly makes man part of its diet.  Sharks don’t eat people, though on occasion they do take an exploratory bite, and the bigger the shark the bigger the bite.  Unlike other animals (certain tigers, mosquitoes), sharks rarely attack people. It happens, of course, but rarely.  Dogs attack people too. Hippopotami attack people. People attack people. There is nothing especially dangerous about sharks. People fear them because of media hype. People fear them because when people swim in the ocean, they are no longer the top of the food chain. People fear them because they are hard to see when one is swimming in the water.  And, then, there is Jaws, which ruined the ocean for at least two generations of people!

In any event, the shark is a beautiful animal that has been around for hundreds of millions of years. As the apex predator, it helps keep our oceans healthy.  Sharks are being destroyed, and the harm to the ecosystem cannot be readily predicted, but can easily be imagined. Entire food chains are collapsing. For want of sharks, the ray populations explode. Too many rays, and the population of scallops is destroyed. If you  make yoru living selling scallops, and there are none to be found, you can thank the overfishing of sharks. Of course, you are then probably killing rays and cutting them up into discs and calling them Scallops (yes folks, this does happen), but the point is, messing with an ecosystem is never a good thing.

Enough preaching, and here are some pictures!

Shark and Fish Merry-Go-Round

Staring down the barrel.

Its a Bird! It's a Plane! No, its Super Shark!

Bloody tooth

David Posing While Photographers Shoot the Sharks

Remoras

These creatures are quite odd looking. A remora typically attaches itself to a larger fish, shark, ray or turtle. Perhaps they eat the bits of food that their traveling companions drop. Typically they do not harm the host, but occasionally, they may congregate around the gills and cause a problem. So if you ever stumble upon a sluggish manta or whale shark with a bunch of these suckers on their gills, give a hand and remove them by grabbing the head and pushing back toward the tail.

And here it is in profile form. You can see the “sucker” on top of its head.  And yes, that is the top of its head even though it looks like it is swimming upsidedown.

And, finally here is the Remora with his “sneaker tread” fully exposed. This is the part that sucks onto its ride.

Bahamas Photos (Macro Shots)

These pictures were taken with a 60mm macro lens. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Hawksbill Turtle

Spotfin Butterfly Fish