New Adventures and New Behaviors
Damn I love those sharks
So we begin our adventures for the 2015 season. Kicked off our shark diving with a visit to Tiger Beach and Bimini for great hammerheads. The great thing is I get to spend 4 weeks straight out there, diving with these sharks. My goal during these 4 weeks is of course to try and learn new behavior and meet as many new sharks as possible. And so far I have not been disappointed…
It was a crazy kick off for the tigers of TB. All my regular tigers players were not there. Hook, Emma, Princess, W, Alex, Gothic Girl, Jersey Girl, Notch, New Girl were all a no show. Something that always makes me worry, but it is not uncommon for them to take off during this time of year. The food they get at TB is not enough to sustain them, so they need to go off and hunt, and since breeding season just happened back in November for a lot of the tigers, it makes sense that they need to go find more food.
We did have Wonda and Sophie hang out with us and a bunch of new tigers tried to build confidence to come in and hang out with us. (Sophie mated in late November, so expect more updates about her.) I started a record for these new sharks, and once they come in and start interacting I will introduce them to you all. It was great watching the relationship between Wonda and Sophie this week. Wonda is definetly the dominant shark and would nip, gap and push Sophie away everytime she came in to the bait box.
I decided to keep a camera running on every dive on this trip to try and document these behaviors and hopefully I have captured a lot of this for you all. Will try and cut a video blog together for you all, while I am out at sea this week. Was going to try and cut something yesterday but I got off the boat yesterday with a stomach flu, so my one day on shore was spent sick in a hotel bed trying to beat it before I head out again tonite. Thankfully, I sweated it out and feeling much better this morning.
The lemons of course did not disappoint. Taxi was there and up to her old habits. She does not like the tigers around the bait box and continues to try to push them away. I also had new sharks come in and lay next to the bait box for me to give them a back rub. I love when they do this, its such an amazing feeling having a shark stop for you because it wants you to rub its back. One laid down next to my buddy Luis and he rubbed her back for almost 20 minutes. So crazy when that happens. Lemons are truly great ambassadors for the shark species. Can’t wait to learn more and see what they are willing to share.
The great hammerheads off Bimini were great as always. I am trying to get to know them better and thankfully this season I will have lots of opportunites to do this. We had on average 2 hammerheads with us the whole time and at one point we had 7 with us. It truly is a sight to see, all those big sharks. When you are with them, you feel like you are in the presence of shark royalty. I was able to help one of them out. A hammer we dubbed Bertha, had a stingray barb broken off on her during one of her last hunting trips and I was able to pull it out and ease her pain. I posted the video on our intagram and facebook page so if you want to check it out, give it a look. The barb was at least 2 1/2 inch, so it had to hurt.
I wish I could write more but, I have 5 minutes until check out and I need to pack and prep for the next trip…keep checking out our pages for new blogs and updates. Cheers my friends.
