The True History of Tiger Beach
Notes from a Shark Junkies Journal
Tiger Beach has grown and changed and become crazier and more legendary through the years. For those of you that do not know what or where Tiger Beach is; it is a dive site in the Northern Bahamas, on a shallow sand bank, near a deep water drop off and is one of the very few places in the World where you can spend long hours diving with tiger sharks, lemon sharks and reef sharks. I remember that very first trip out to the now legendary spot. It was December of 2003, and I believe this was the very first time anyone ever dropped chum boxes down in that area to try and attract tiger sharks. I know this, because I was on that boat, 11 years ago…on that first chum session. Here is the story.
We were on a boat I chartered to find tigers and great hammerheads. It had been a pretty good week, but we were plagued with bad weather. One of the days we had really bad conditions and so we were forced to lee up for the day. Our boat captain, Jim Abernethy remembered a spot on a shallow sand bank, where he had seen tiger sharks. (flash back to a few years; Jim was visiting a friend on Capt. Scott Smith’s boat one evening, which was anchored in this area. Captain Scott’s crew were cleaning fish from the days catch and dumping the carcasses over board and tigers came in to eat the carcassses.)
Back to my story…we were forced to lee up due to the bad weather, so Jim decided to anchor up there. While we waited for the storm to pass, he dropped some boxes of bait and chum. After a few hours, we could see tigers hanging around in the distance, but they refused to come in. The weather cleared up and we ended up leaving the spot. A week after our trip ended, I got a call from Jim, “Eli, remember that sand bank where we were chumming for tigers?” I said “yea?” “well, I figured it out. I decided to chum over night and when we woke up, we had tigers!” And that was it, Jim pretty much spent all his time out there chumming and diving this spot, and it grew and more sharks came in and then more sharks came in, he named it ‘Tiger Beach.’
The reason I am telling this story is that there are a lot more boats going out there and hundreds of people diving here each year, yet no one really knows its history. I have seen and heard people trying to call it by other names; Fish Tales, Tiger reef, Tiger Town…but it’s all Tiger Beach. The only reason this area has become what it is today is beause of Jim in those early years, where he chummed it and built it into what it has become today. So even though, me and Jim do not see eye to eye, I think it is important that people remember who created this spot. Time has a way of altering history and the way it really happened, but I didn’t want that to happen here - I love and respect this dive site too much. So I dedicated this blog to the man who has created the world’s greatest shark dive, Tiger Beach…Thank you Jim.
