Hawaii 2: Best Father's Day Ever (TIGER SHARK!)

Since this is my first father's day I realize it automatically the best but today was quite amazing. Erin (grandma) and Cindy C. (fairy god mother) are in town and have been helping us with Cayman.

I started the day diving at Pahoehoe and found a turtle strangely deep eating something under a rock. Looking at the video later, I realized it was a Hawksbill Turtle. Here is the video as well as some fish photos I have taken this last week. 

   

On my second dive I saw a TIGER SHARK! I have never seen one underwater but have obsessed over Hawaii's most dangerous shark for the last decade. In fact, I know divers with 10,000 Hawaii dives who have never seen a tiger shark. These sharks eat turtles and dolphins and certainly have a presence in the water. While kicking out, some other divers were coming in from their dive. "Keep your eyes open, there's kitties out there today," they said. I knew they were talking about tigers and I admit I was terrified. 

I asked about the visibility, "is it murky out there, are they going to sneak up on me?"  

"No. You'll be fine. Just keep your eyes open around 40 to 50 feet." 

I thought about heading back in. I didn't feel completely comfortable facing a tiger shark (which grow up to 18 feet) by myself. But at the same time I really did want to see one. Kind of a bucket list type thing. I started to descend and soon reached the depth they had talked about. I normally swim checking out every fish and hole I can. This dive was different. I rotated my head from side to side, up, and finally behind me looking for something much bigger than the small reef fish. The entire time I keep my fingers on the video shutter button on my camera ready for anything. After 20 minutes I was thinking, "I tried, there is no shame in heading back now." I started to head back but thought again, "No, I have plenty of air. Keep trying." 

I headed deeper to 76 feet of water and then I head a sound. The sound was of a heavy chain clinking in the water. I have head this sound before from videos of other divers seeing this large tiger shark. The chain is connected to a large green buoy marking the entrance to the harbor. Fisherman coming in with their catches throw their waste fish carcasses overboard at this buoy. Overtime, the buoy has become a gathering ground for tiger sharks. 

At this point, I had been underwater for close to 40 minutes and I was again ready to call it quits. Then something funny happened. Several large fish began to move close to me. At least three large jacks and several large surgeonfish swam close to me. This has never happened to me and a moment later, as I scanned the water, I saw it. The shark I saw was around 10 to 12 feet long and had substantial girth and beautiful stripes. The shark looked at me and swam from my right to left side. I pushed the video shutter button and backed up as I filmed. In my head I was thinking of something a spear-fisherman told me years ago, "prey acts like prey, don't act like prey." I kept my eyes on the shark and once it turned to the deep, I steadily began to swim away. I kept looking behind me, but saw nothing. I hugged the bottom on my way back in and eventually reached the small cove where everyone was hanging out.

This was certainly the most exciting dive of my life. Below is the short video that simply documents what I saw. The shark is calm in the video and showing no signs of aggression. It was a beautiful animal to see in the wild and I am glad there are things in nature that scare me. It makes diving interesting.  

For dinner we all headed up the hill to Big Island Brewhaus, a fantastic restaurant. Here is Cayman and I happy at the restaurant.

Shark Week

Big Island Part 6: Exploring the Island Caves, Zoo, Manta Rays, & Tiger Sharks

The last several days have been amazing! On Monday, Shelley and I got up early and drove nearly 300 miles exploring the island. This island is big. Here is the route we took. This took us through rolling green hills, cloud forest, dry wastelands, rainforest, lava flows, a zoo, and giant swells hitting a cliff.

 One of our first stops was a cave that continues for miles. I went 100 yards until I couldn't see the entrance and stopped trusting my flashlight. On my out I snapped this photo of Shelley at the entrance.

One of our favorite stops was at a zoo. There was less than 20 people at the whole zoo and the animals were very friendly. These nice donkeys walked over to us when we talked to them and let us pet their noses (which are as soft as a puppy's belly).

 This photo kind of reminds me of this. 

 They had a neat pigeon too.

This is the largest bromeliad I have ever seen. Between each leaf was a small ecosystem. These plants are what poison dart frogs breed in, but there are not any dart frogs on the big island.

 Here is Shelley next to a lava tree. This is the result of hot lava hitting a very moist large tree.

We found this wonderful state park (no one was there but us). The part is a huge Ironwood tree forest right on the ocean cliffs. The sea was angry.

 

Here are some of the waves and Shelley's "stay 50 feet from the cliff rule"

 

On Tuesday, we got more diving in and had maybe our most memorable experience with Green Sea Turtles from shore. Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (the Hawaiian state fish) are fairly easy to find, but difficult to photograph. I have several hundred bad photos of these fish where they are blurry and swimming away from my camera. When photographing fish, I have learned, many ignore you if you ignore them, but as soon as you face them, they swim away. I wanted a good triggerfish photo and I saw this fish in about 5 feet of water and he had just gulped up a huge scoop of sand (probably eating a crab) he turned to me and spit out the sand (through his gills) as I snapped his photo.

One of my favorite fish are anthais. These are some of the most colorful fish but usually live in places too deep to dive. I have been following another divers blog and he has wonderful long-finned anthais photos. He talked about a particular site he sees them and I followed his lead and found this little guy. This is the first one I have ever seen and he was not shy at all and allowed me to take tons of photos of him as he gulped plankton from the water. 

Some of the turtles here are not shy either. This one (which I think has been fed by people) would come over to Shelley's voice and rest his head near her feet. We didn't touch the turtle but did take good photos of it.

In other news, our dryer was broken in our original condo, so we were "upgraded" to a different condo. The view is more ocean and we can see the cruise ship that comes every Wednesday. Here is our view:

Thursday night was certainly a highlight of this trip. Here is the story: Shelley really wanted to do the night dive with Manta Rays here on the Big Island. To my surprise, Shelley suggested we just climb in the ocean after dark and swim several hundred yards around a point out to open sea to the spot the boats take the divers (which they charge $150 each). To be honest, it sounded pretty scary to me, swimming in the open ocean at night is a little intimidating, but I didn't tell Shelley it sounded scary. The photo below is Shelley getting her gear ready after dark. The shore was dark, so we tied glow sticks to each other and to the lava cliff we climbed in at to mark our exit route. The dive was amazing. The video below is amazing (its Shelley in it).

 

Earlier in the day, I got some great photos of a rare fish. And also a not so rare fish. If you learned to draw a fish in kindergarten, you probably learned to draw a fairly accurate Sleek Unicorn fish. These fish strangely look just like goldfish crackers. 

Whomever designed the fish of the world wanted to kill scuba divers. The most colorful amazing fish in Hawaii are mostly found in deep water that lures divers into depths that are dangerous to dive. The Hawaiian long-finned anthias is a perfect example and is usually found 100 feet or more below. The female is the most beautiful of the species (uncommon in the animal kingdom, except for humans of course).  The male is show a few post before this. I found this little fish swimming upside down near the ceiling of a small cave at about 100 feet down. 

The highlight of the trip from me, had to be seeing a tiger shark from shore. Seeing a tiger shark underwater is a rare event. I know divers with 12,000+ dives who have never seen one underwater. On this trip we have made Sandwich Island Divers (now out of business) our dive shop and the owner Steve has provided us with tons of tips and some awesome stories from his decades of diving here. He told us we had a good chance of seeing a tiger shark if we dove near the harbor. This "tip" kept me away from the harbor for most of our tip, but seeing the large groups of dolphins off shore eventually lured me into the water. The first dive was a little a spooky as I hoped I didn't run into a tiger shark (which grown up to 18 feet). The dive ended with no shark and no dolphins. Shelley refused to dive the site so the next day I headed out alone once again looking for dolphins. About 30 minutes into the dive I ran into a couple of divers who signaled to me they saw a shark, they pointed in the direction I was headed. I keep going in that direction and saw my first Fishers Angelfish (3 actually), but no shark or dolphins. After the dive Shelley and I walked over to some rocks near the dive site and I spotted a large dark figure swimming right off the rocks, "There it is!" I yelled to Shelley "Do you see it?" She did.

We spent the next several hours on the rocks watching a 14 foot tiger shark swimming around. He was hard to film with the glare on the water, but below is what we got. In the second video he grabs something at the surface (maybe a snorkel?). In the last few weeks, many divers here have seen the tiger underwater, but I not interested in seeing it alone. Diving alone in a know tiger shark territory is asking for it.

Sharks Seen While Scuba Diving off Shell Beach California

Hey Everyone, if you haven't already heard I saw 4 large sharks while scuba diving yesterday. All 4 were bigger then me and the largest one was about 8 feet long (maybe 10). We think they were sevengill sharks. Here is a photo of one (from Monterey aquarium) and a short story of how we ran into them:

We were diving in Shell Beach (just north of Pismo) at around 5:00 in the afternoon. My dive buddy Eric and I dropped down to about 8 feet of water. Within 3 or 4 minutes underwater Eric grabbed my arm, I turned and saw the back half of the shark swimming away (it was about 6 ot 7 feet from us). We both signaled we were okay and Eric signaled to stay put for a moment so he could clear his head.

About 3 minutes later when we were moving forward again, this time in about 14 feet of water, I turned on my dive light and shined it on the ground first and then in front of us, as my light shined a head there was a 6 to 7 foot shark right in front of us (about 4 feet away) it was facing us then turned and looked at us with his eye then very slowly swam away. 

We continued for about 2 or 3 minutes then signaled to each other to surface. We popped up on the edge of a kelp bed and talked about the sharks and made a few guess as to what species they were. As we talked about 10 feet from Eric a large black fin splashed in the water, Eric looked at me and asked if I had seen it too, I said I had and didn't know what it was. We brushed it off as maybe a sea lion or a comerant diving. Eric suggested we surface swim back to shore, but I told him I felt safer under water and we are much less likely to be attacked under there. 

We dropped down to about 17 feet of water and slowly started making our way in. We had decided I would navigate so I was looking at my compass when Eric grabbed me again, this time I had almost swam into the shark. It was less then 3 feet away and came from left (Eric's side) to right my side, it swam slowly right in front of us. This was the largest one we saw and was between 8 to 10 feet long. 

About 2 minutes later we saw are last shark of the dive, which circled us about 6 feet away. We swam a little more until we were in about 6 feet of water then popped back to the surface to swim the rest of the way in. 

FAQ
1. Were you scared?
Yes, we both were but we stayed composed. Each sighting was no more or less frightening then the first one. We both stayed very calm and continued our planned dive. I was more in awe then scared in the water, after getting out I began thinking about it more and was a little jittery for the rest of the day. We wanted to get back in the water as soon as possible so our minds would not build it up and up as a fear that would make diving scary in the future.

2. Are these sharks dangerous?
Sevengills have had 2 recorded attacks on people and more then a dozen on dogs. I don't know why these sharks choose to swim to us, maybe to look at us, maybe they are territorial, we don't know. Sevengill sharks often hunt in large packs circleing sea lions and seals and then closing in for the kill. It is extremely rare to be attacked by a shark that you first saw. Most shark attacks happen without the victim every knowing the shark was coming. These sharks choose to show themselves to us, with there deliberate show swimming. I think they were probably just curious. The sharks you have to worry about are the ones you don’t see.

3. Is this area known for sharks?
Our dive friend Terry dives this location more then anybody. He sees sharks there all the time and said he has especially seen them recently. I also talked to a Kayaker who saw a 16-17 foot Great White there a few years ago. (Update added 12/21/05: Terry was diving at Shell Beach a few weeks ago and was approached by a Great White Shark underwater. He was hunting at the time and the shark probably wanted the fish he had killed. There are few divers in the entire world who have ever even seen a White Shark underwater).

We went out again this morning with a camera and dove about 1000 yards from where we dove yesterday. We were unable to find any large sharks, but did see 3 sting rays.