So, I told you about the shark dives I went on. They were with Aqua Trek out of Pacific Harbor Fiji.They were good dives, described in the previous post. But today, well, today I dove with BAD SHARKS!!!
Last night I was attending the Lovo (pronounced something like Lobo), a Fiji version of a family barbecue. I have some great videos of that, but that is for a different post. I was done with diving here, and expected to drink a lot of Kava and Fiji Bitter as tomorrow I had nothing to do.
Anyway, I was talking to a young couple from California who were here diving. The guy just got his dive certification and had only had his four training dives before going on a shark dive with Beqa Adventure Divers (hence BAD SHARKS) fijisharkdive.com . Their description of the dives sold me, and I knew the company was going out the next day and all I had to do was show up in time for the bus at 7:30 am. This could have been an issue as breakfast here starts at 6:30 am FIJI time. That means food starts showing up at maybe 7am, and if you badger them, the coffee shows up at 7:15.
So.... No more Kava for me. I left a message with the front desk, prepped my gear and went to bed early.... ish.
This was not like the other shark dive. They were regimented, and efficient.
On the way to the shop, and out to the dive site, I met and talked to a young woman from Germany. She was early 20's and was wearing a Rolex Dive Watch. Not the normal equipment of a 20 something diver who is staying in moderately priced accommodations (they have some dormitoryish style rooms here). I probably have details of the story wrong, but she is on a scholarship sponsored by Rolex www.owuscholarship.org/scholarships There are other sponsors supplying gear and more. It is quite an opportunity and only the best of the best get it. She is going to school for Veterinarian Sciences??. Her stories were amazing. She is traveling the world diving, learning, and just having an amazing time, most of it paid for. Why couldn't I be born brilliant and ambitious?
Anyway, this post is about BAD SHARKS.
For the first dive they brought us out to the site, briefed us, all 6 of us!!!! Then they brought us down to about 90 feet deep. There were only a few Bull Sharks swimming around, and I am thinking this kinda sucks. OK, seeing lots of sharks swimming around never sucks, but there were not many compared to the other shark dives.
We all kneeled behind a wall. When they brought the bucket of food out, the Bull Sharks came. There were far more than a dozen, hard to count but I would not be surprised if there were two dozen. Other sharks, including Lemon Sharks, came to eat as well. The plentiful staff stood behind us with poles to push the sharks away from us. They fed them tuna fish heads. Right in front of us. Some were fed by hand, BY HAND. The sharks would come straight at us and grab the heads maybe 10 or 15 feet in front of us, and then swim by. There was a diver holding the big bucket resembling one of the big garbage cans that you might roll out to the curb, about 10 feet above us and maybe 10 feet in front of us. Occasionally he would drop a head or two out fairly close in front of us and the sharks would swarm and fight for the heads. These were big fish heads. And BIG Sharks.
After we did that for a while, and were almost out of safe bottom time, we moved up to a spot around 35 feet. Here we saw other, smaller sharks, get fed smaller fish heads. Now, I did not say small sharks. There were some lemon sharks, and an assortment of other types here for a meal.
Then, we went up to 15 feet for our safety stop. Normally a safety stop is a three minute stop, usually done in open water holding a line or looking at shallow coral. Not here. Here we sat watching even more sharks getting fed.
During our surface interval (rest stop), on the boat, we learned about all the work Beqa Adventure Divers is doing to help the sharks, and of course plenty of info on the morons who are killing sharks by the millions because their peters don't work and they think that eating shark fins will somehow help them. To kill such a majestic creature to use the entire shark to feed your family is one thing, to kill it for just the fins, throwing the live shark back into the water is the sign of a seriously broken person. Eating shark fin soup supports this behavior, and anyone doing that is a scourge to the planet and a serious loser. If you ever talk to someone that eats this, laugh at them for being such a pathetic human being, then slap them for their stupidity.
Aaaaaaand back to the second dive. This time we only had one stop, I think it was around 35 feet, but I will try to remember to check. We laid down behind a wall while the sharks were fed by one dive master while the other dive masters stood behind us with their poles to discourage the sharks from coming in for a taste.
Let me tell you, seeing a huge Bull Shark coming straight at you, grabbing a big Tuna Head out of the hand of a dive master and swallowing as it swims within a couple feet of you is something else. The dive masters were good at keeping the sharks at least an arms length away... Most of the time. I did have to put my hand up to block a tail from smacking me in the face. There were a few times I am pretty sure that my head looked like a tuna head to the sharks. There were a bunch of times the sharks would come straight at me, and be pushed away when their snouts were only a foot or so away.
One of the more exciting times was when nurse sharks would get into the container and grab a fish head (that was too big for them to eat I might add) and swim close to us with it. The Bull Sharks always ended up with the head, but you never knew where it was going to be when it got swallowed. There were some exciting times on that dive.
Our 15 foot safety stop was done in open water, with a few big sharks coming up to check us out.
So.... of the two, I have to say Beqa Adventure Divers was the best shark dive. Aqua Trek was good too, but just not as good.
Beqa Adventure Divers ALWAYS video tapes the shark dives. Well, almost always. For some reason they did not tape this dive. I suppose it was due to such a small number of divers (6), three of which had been on this dive before and were not likely to buy the video. A real bummer as I really wanted that video. I saw the video of the CA couple, and that is what sold me on this dive. I will try to get a copy of it, as it was pretty similar to what my dive was like. There is a short video on BAD's web site.
BUT..... The diver that told me about this dive was kind enough to share the video from her dive. It is pretty much the same as mine, and I had met almost all the divers that were on that dive, so I share it here. Just imagine that one of the divers in it is me.
I extracted some photos from the video, for those that don't want to watch the whole thing.
