Sharky McSharkster
Shark Dive in Roatan
Originally uploaded by hazybluedot. Today I went on my very first shark dive. I will admit, I was a little apprehensive at first. I know sharks would never try and eat me on purpose, but they do have poor eye sight and make mistakes on occasion. And yes, when they DO make a mistake they will let go after one bite and go away but still, that can mangle up an appendage pretty badly. Anyway, there were 25 people going on the dive so I figured at the very least if a shark DID make a mistake it would only be a 1 in 25 chance that it was me.
It was a bit of a boat ride, we had to trek around to the other side of the island (here's the Inn of Last Resort (where we're staying) by the way).
We had a long shpiel from our dive master about how the dive would go and how we were not to stick our fingers out and wiggle them and how we were not to pet the sharks.
We all went down the line and by the time I got there our dive master was already on the bottom tantalizing the sharks with a bucket of fish. As soon as I saw them swimming around any fear and apprehension went away. They were so graceful and not at all mean looking. Plus there were lots of other fish swimming around a lot smaller than me so I figured it they were fine with it I should be too.
It was definitely very cool and I'll do it again if I get the chance. The sharks we saw were large but not huge, I'd say between 6 and 8 feet long. They got pretty close at times and would be swimming all around, to the left and right and above and below, between divers around them, everything. We were really in the middle of a school of these things. Pretty amazing. I wish I could describe it better. I posted some pictures, hopefully that will give some idea. I need to play with white balance and exposure and stuff but I figured I'd get these up right away and then tweak later.