If you’re just getting here on Part 3, please go back and read Part 1 of this story first.

Rather than try to render some kind of chronological account of everything that happened, I’ll just offer some vignettes. You’ll have to forgive the delay in getting to Part 3. But I wanted to wait until some new photographs were available and they’re not available until the photographers tell me they’re available. I actually have a huge cost/ease advantage by diving without a camera, but in exchange for that, I am (quite correctly) at their mercy as regards my access to their pictures. And I need to say they’ve been very gracious about offering those to me. They spend absurd amounts of money on equipment. Then they put a ton of effort into composing and lighting the picture just right. I’m grateful for any photographic gifts they offer me.

So, courtesy of Dustin Hurlbut, here are some astonishing pictures from the trip…

Getting back to the boat

I said in Part 1 that they warned us to keep our masks in the water when we kicked back to the boat. The first time I saw a group of divers go back to the boat, I learned why. Our dives were all quite shallow (basically nobody went below 40′ and I was above 30′ the whole time) so dive times ran upwards of 90 minutes. Anyway, our group of four Italian divers (lovely people, all) were the first to wave good-bye to the divemaster on the first dive of the trip. He indicated the direction they should go and off they went. The idea is that they would kick out away from the buoy holding the bait box, then surface. The boat would spot them and come get them.

Well, as soon as they headed for the surface and started kicking along the surface, two or three whitetips peeled away from the bait box and started following our divers. Closely. There was no incident and there never was an incident during the week, but it was startling to see how immediately the sharks would abandon the bait box and chum to see if that commotion of people up on the surface was potentially serious food.

From my perspective, it was kind of a game. I’d go to the surface, always arranging to go with somebody (more choice of targets for the sharks . Then we’d attract the boat’s attention (which occasionally took a couple of minutes). In the meantime, the sharks (it was always 2-3 of them) would come up and swim right at us – just to see what we’d do. If they came too close, one of us would kick a fin at them, which would make them swim away. Briefly. We’d make it to the ladder of the boat and they’d be right behind us, just swimming back and forth across the stern of the boat (“You’re really getting out of the water, aren’t you?”).

Sometimes they’d start tracking you while they were on the surface. There were a couple of youngsters who liked to come zipping up out of the deep blue right at you. But they clearly had an understanding of whether you were facing them or not. It was like dealing with an aggressive dog – you just told them who was boss and it was all fine.

Except the time I pissed one off, I guess. I got a calf cramp (as will happen to divers) on the kick back to the boat. I stopped and stretched it (you pull your fin tip toward you) and basically shook myself out. I had my face out of the water for maybe 5-10 seconds. Later on the boat, Dustin comes up to me laughing.

“Man you pissed one shark off.”

“Huh?”

“You were the one with the leg cramp up on the surface, right?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“So, when you straightened out your leg, you conked a shark right on the head. He swam down a few feet and dropped into a threat display [severely dropped pectorals, arched back] then swam back up toward you. He just wanted you to know he wasn’t happy with the way you treated him.”

“I didn’t even know oceanic whitetips do a threat display.”

“Neither did I – sure wish I coulda gotten a picture of it.”

Getting close

Being an underwater photographer is hard. Aside all the other problems, you have water between you and your subject. Any significant amount of water reduces the quality of the image to unusability. So they use massively wide-angle lenses (I think 10-17mm was the favorite lens on this trip) and get incredibly close to their subject. As I described before, whenever they saw a piece of fish chum floating in the water, they’d dash over to it because they knew that within a few seconds, some shark was going to dash in too.

They did have a slight aid in that the electronics in their cameras and (particularly) their underwater strobes created RF fields that attracted the sharks. So sharks would often swim right up to the photographers, trying to understand why their Ampullae of Lorenzini were saying “food” while the rest of their senses weren’t. The result was often a shark nosing around literally within inches (or against) the dome port of a photographer’s camera housing, while the shooter giggled into his/her regulator and fired images as fast as the strobe would recycle.

Andy has white strobe filters that hang from the strobe housing – he can use them to diffuse the light from the strobes if he wishes. What we noticed early on was that the sharks were attracted to those filters, dangling from the strobe housing. I mean, they looked just like, oh, a piece of fish such as was being thrown into the water. So the shark would see a small white object, sense RF field, and go over to check it out. Right into the sweet spot of Andy’s lens. That’s why he’s a pro shooter and trip leader.

It also created a number of amusing pas de deux between a shark and photographer. The shark would nose in on the camera and the photographer would be like, “I want you, like, 18″ away” and try to back up that distance. Shark: “No no – wanna see what the buzzing is about” and push in close. Photographer: “Here, I push you back 18″ and quick take shot.” Shark: “Wanna see what that buzzing about…”

Keeping track

We never had fewer than 7-8 whitetips in the water on any dive. Sometimes it was easy to tell where they were – particularly when they went after freshly tossed chum. But between “feedings”, they’d just cruise around the divers, waiting for something to happen. You’d be watching one or two, and then think to yourself “You know, Beto waved seven fingers earlier. I see… 4… 5… sharks…”. You’d turn around [1] and “Hello!” there’s a shark cruising right behind you. Or over your head. I don’t know how many times I randomly twirled 180 degrees to see nothing but brown shark-body passing me. I could literally count the sea lice and read the tag number that some ichthyologist had stuck on the animal.

The big lesson

Oddly, the most powerful moment on the trip didn’t come underwater and had nothing to do with sharks. We were at breakfast on the second or third day and somebody noticed that Dustin was making bacon sandwiches, putting them in baggies, and into his backpack to go onto the boat. This despite the fact that they sent lunch with us each day. A question was asked and Andy, the trip leader, said “Dustin – why don’t you tell them your story.” Seems that Andy had hosted Dustin on previous trips and knew about this…

Multiple decades ago, Dustin was on a military helicopter that flew into the side of a mountain in the American Pacific Northwest. Seven people were onboard; two survived, Dustin was one of them. He went through the windshield and was extremely lucky in his trajectory and where and how he landed. But he was still unable to move. He went without food or water for three days. On the third day, when he knew he was going to die and had gotten comfortable with that idea, a mountain climber found him. The climber was in an area where people rarely go, in a season they rarely go. The military search choppers looking for him flew right over earlier but couldn’t see him (or the wreckage) because of the cloud cover.

Not too long after that, during a lull on the boat, I asked Dustin, “So, what do you know that we don’t?” “Every day is awesome. I feel that every day I get is a bonus.” Dustin isn’t the type to say carpe diem, but that was both his message and the way he lives. As I said, he was always the first one in the water and the last one out, and you just got the sense that the normal nuisances of life don’t get to Dustin very much.

That was my big lesson for the week.

The last day, I was one of the first ones ready to get in (Dustin was already in the water, of course). I was on the port swim step and divemaster Charlotte said, “You ready?” I looked over to the starboard swim step where divemaster Beto was about to go in; “Beto! Listo?” “Listo – ¡Vamanos!“, and we were in the water.

The bubbles cleared and two exquisite Oceanic Whitetip Sharks swam up to greet me. Dustin is right; every day is awesome.

[Note: that's me, bottom left. I'm probably only 10-15 feet from the sharks, but the wide angle lens distorts distances and sizes]

——————————————————

[1] There’s a very natural and easy “rotate about your center of gravity” maneuver you can do on scuba if you’re hanging upright in the water. You basically kick one fin forward and the other back – you twirl like a ballerina.

If you haven’t already, have a look at Part 1 of this series.

When we got back to the resort Sunday evening, some fishermen who are staying at Hawk’s Nest were drinking in the bar. They showed us pictures of oceanic whitetips surrounding the back of their boat as they landed (or tried to land) struggling fish.

“Where were you?”

“Columbus Point”.

It turns out that our crew had gotten skunked at Columbus Point earlier in the week and had taken us to the place where they had landed on three sharks the day before. But Columbus Point, even though a one-hour ride from the resort, was obviously the place to be.

The next morning, we braved a moderately bumpy ride out there and Simon and Theodore Beto and Charlotte began chopping up fish and throwing it in the water. I don’t think 15 minutes had passed when I saw this from the top of the boat:

So I yelled, “¡Los tiburones están aqui!”

And all hell broke loose. People cheered and hollered, but only to the degree that they could do so while getting into their dive gear. About which I need to say a word or two. There is quite a variety of divers on this trip, but there is one common thread running throughout: they are all stupendously competent at diving. A feature I imagine that holds with all of Andy’s trips. If you go out on a random resort dive, you will encounter some bozo divers; it’s a fact of life. No bozos on this bus. I have to say it’s a joy diving in these circumstances where you don’t worry about other divers. If somebody needs their air turned on, a strap adjusted, whatever, that’s fine. But basically the crew says “Go” and 12 divers are suited up and in the water very quickly. Note that also includes (with two exceptions, including me) taking bulky, complex, and absurdly expensive camera gear into the water.

Anyway, Beto was first in, Dustin immediately behind him. Dustin is always the first one in the water. Me, I was next in line for take-off behind Dustin. “How’s my [mask] skirt?” I asked Charlotte on the swim-step. [She makes a minor adjustment] “Perfect.” “Thanks – hasta la proxima.”

And I went straight into the deep blue. They’d told us to not tarry on the surface but head straight down to the bait box. The bait box is a metal cube, perhaps 18″ on a side. Its top is perforated. They load it up with chopped up fish and hang it 20′ down off a buoy. The fish bits float up through the holes in the top and ring the sharky dinner bell.

As the bubbles from my entry cleared, I saw two divers and two exquisite oceanic whitetip sharks. One made a quick pass by me. Anything at or near the surface is fundamentally more interesting than things at depth because out here on the open ocean, few things swim around on the surface. It’s often a sign of trouble of some sort if there’s activity on the surface and nothing attracts these critters like trouble. Of course, that goes a long way toward explaining the part of the pre-dive briefing about keeping your face in the water.

I made a quick descent down to 20′ or so and just started taking it all in. Here I was, finally, after 20 years, seeing oceanic whitetips on scuba. It was actually surreal, seeing scenes that I had looked at over and over in picture books, but now they were real and happening. There are some classic shots that you see of oceanic whitetips (upward toward a near-surface shark, side-on to a passing shark, shooting down from above the shark, etc). In the first ten minutes, I’d gotten the real version of every one of those shots. Plus the really impressive one…

Whitetips have the Latin name Carcharhinus longimanus. The species name (“longimanus”) means “long arms”, referring to their extremely long pectoral fins. So if a whitetip swims straight at you, you see his snout, plus the dorsal fin pointing straight up and the two massive pectorals dropped to 4:00 and 8:00 o’clock. And the tail slowly swishing behind it. It’s simultaneously awesome and (the first 2-3 times you see it) a bit intimidating. The best analogy I can think of is what a P-51 Mustang WWII fighter must look like coming dead on.

The first time it happened, I’ll admit I was a bit nervous. Not scared, but sort of, “So, what am I supposed to do here?” The shark swam right up to me and I (forgive me here) made a fist and bopped it on the head to send it away. Which it did. Beto saw me do that and shook his head, indicating that a firm palm-shove would do the job. [1]

In the adjacent picture, ignore the apparent size relationship between the shark and me. This is an artifact of my distance from the shark and the wide-angle lens that photographers use. The shark is probably 6-7′ long; I’m about 6′ long.

As time passed, more divers joined us. And more sharks, too. Early on, I glanced at Beto and he held up five fingers, his eyes grinning in his mask. More time. Eight fingers, bigger grin. The smallest shark was perhaps four feet long. I would put the biggest one we’ve seen at 8-9′. Interestingly, I think we have seen nothing but female sharks; I have no idea where the males are.

They are a rich brown, with mottled white on the tips of the dorsal and pectoral fins – not nearly as pronounced as on (e.g.) the whitetip reef shark. The dorsal is broad and rounded and the snout, which looks pointy in most pictures, is actually relatively wide. And they are just incredibly beautiful.

With no pictures to take, I was able to just relax and enjoy the scene. The photographers work incredibly hard, trying to compose good pictures as the sharks come by – either getting another diver in the shot or (preferably) nothing but sapphire blue behind the animal. And this is where you see the diving ability come into play. Recall that we are over a thousand feet of water – there is nothing but blue under us. So buoyancy control has to be done without thinking. As I watched the show (Beto eventually got to nine fingers on this dive), I marveled at the lack of flailing, the smooth and relaxed movement of literally every single diver in the water. I say that, of course, until you compare us to the sharks, who basically define the word grace.

Every once in a while the boat would drive over near us and toss fresh hunks of fish into the water. Every time that happened, the sharks would speed up and zip around, trying to snatch pieces before another shark could get there. Simultaneously, the photographers would speed up and zip around, trying to position themselves to take the perfect “Shark inhaling piece of fish” image. The most fun was when they’d throw in an entire fish head. [2] A shark would find it and try to eat it whole, which never ended well. Her effort to swallow the thing would attract other sharks, who’d move in, hoping she’d have to spit it out (which often happened). Of course, that collection of sharks would attract photographers and pretty soon there’d be a giant ball of sharks and photographers, all clustered around a fish head. It was pretty cool.

For the best pictures and the moral of the story, check out Part 3.

———————————–

[1] In fact, from today’s perspective of three days in the water with the sharks, I have touched a shark only one more time. That was nobody’s fault – she was turning and basically bumped into me. I gave her a gentle shove to say “Go that way, please”, which she did.

[2] And yes, I’d get the Fish Heads song into my head.