Warm blue water with a ton of marine life to me is a great hook to go visit an island. In early July 2022 we sailed around St. Martin and got in a pedestrian 8 dives in a week. Nevertheless, we still saw a good variety of reef live. Some of my favorites were the turtles. All were green sea turtles but there were quite a few of them. Most were eating on the reef. Only one was swimming apparently looking for a meal.
A turtle at rest
But we also saw a variety of fish. Some were the usual pretty grunts that would show up in relatively large schools.
Ceasar grunts and goat fish swimming through a wreck
But the colors on the reef were not limited to browns and yellows. Instead there were also reds and other colors.
Black bar soldier fish beneath soft corals
And of course, often on the edge of visibility there were grey reef sharks patrolling around the divers.
During a few months a year, primarily from December to March, it is possible to see great hammerhead sharks in Bimini. Sure I had taken pictures of sharks underwater before, but never hammerhead sharks.
In my preparation for the trip, it looked to me like the likelyhood of getting a picture of a great hammerhead without going on a dive where the sharks were being fed, was a very low probability. You have to ask: “What self respecting apex predator would want to be around a bunch of noisy open circuit divers?” The answer it seemed to me was a very old decrepit deaf hammerhead and then that would probably be a fluke. So that meant in all probability I would have to be on a dive where the shop feed the hammerheads in order to get them to come in close enough to photograph. That determination, limited the shops that I could dive with to one in Bimini. As sometimes happens, one of my friends Michelle, with DXDivers was running a trip out to Bimini to dive at the Big Game Club with Neal Watson’s shop. So I signed up for the trip and talked David, one of my dive buddies into joining me.
So, before my trip I started by looking at images that had been taken in Bimini. What I noticed was that where available the camera settings reflected the images had been shot on 16mm fish eye lenses. Having shot a 16mm lens for several years it occurred to me that it is a great lens if you can get close to the subject, but not so great if you could not get reasonably close. It also occurred to me that it was probably a bad idea to swim towards a shark that was feeding.
A few years ago I had added to my lens collection a 16-35 f4 zoom lens. The optical characterisitics of the lens I think are quite impressive because it renders a good rectilinear image as long as there is a good amount of light. I had shot the lens behind a 9 inch Zen dome and the optical characteristics were quite good. Given that I thought there was a pretty good chance that the sharks might be a ways away from me when peak action occurred, I opted to bring along the 16-35mm lens and the Zen dome. Now the down side of the Zen dome is that it’s enormous, and weighs several pounds. It also requires a substantial extension tube. My camera rig without the Zen dome weighs in at about 35 pounds. The Zen dome with extension tube adds another 3 pounds or so but also changes substantially the buoyancy characteristics of my rig. And it takes up about almost a third of my dive bag. So now I had to think about what portion of my usual gear was I going to leave home?
In general the images that my review founds that I liked had been shot on full fame DSLR cameras. The ISO’s had been set at between 100 and 400. The fstops used had been between f7 and f14. I also noted that the shutter speed tended to be in the range of 1/200th to 1/250th of a second. The vast majority of the images appeared to have been shot with flash, although for most of the images I could not determine what flash unit or units had been used.
What I could not tell from the images that I reviewed was the relative depth that the shots were taken, but I could see that most were taken where the sharks were swimming over the white sand that is common in the Bahamas. My guess was that the water depth was about 30 feet. As it turned out my guess was pretty close, 26 feet on one dive and 24 on the other.
I next considered strategies for getting sharp focus of the hammerheads as they came in to feed. What I have noticed from other efforts at “shooting sharks” was that they are fast for underwater animals, and their movements seemed to me to be somewhat unpredictable. So It seemed to me that what I wanted to do was be able to use was three D tracking and to try to get focus on the eye as best I could. With some sharks I had noticed it was hard just keeping them in the frame if they were moving quickly. As one of my friends video demonstrates hammerheads are very fast in the water. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZ5mYuFAt5y/?utm_medium=copy_link
It also occurred to me that continuous focus mode might help, but the limiting factor was that underwater strobes only recycle so fast. To try to help save the strobes, I used a relatively low manual strobe power so that if I shot more than one image at a time there was at least some hope that the strobe would fire a second and maybe a third time before recycling.
I also decided I would take a somewhat different approach to shooting the sharks. In most of the images I saw the angle of the shot placed the shark alone over the sand, with few if any divers in any shot. It seemed to me that the reality was that because the sharks were coming in to be fed there were divers who should be included in the shot along with the feeder.
Coming at you
It wasn’t until I was mid-way through the first dive that it occurred to me that the story really was the interaction between the feeders and the sharks. No it is not ballet, nor is it a bull fight because hopefully everyone goes home with the same number of bits that they came to the feed with. Instead, it is a delicate effort to respect the sharks while at the same time demonstrate the pure power and strength that the Hammerheads have that have allowed them to survive millions of years as apex predators.
Surely you are not going to miss that fish treat?
Walking the shark after lunch Open wide You had your treat now carry on
So were the actual dives somewhat like what I expected? I would say so, but like vacations, you still have to go and see for yourself in order to enjoy them.
You are here for a cleaning I presume? Asked the blue head wrasse to the nurse shark
Not long ago I visited Silke Caye which is south of Placencia in Belize. I had been to Silke Caye about a decade ago and when I dove there then the wind was howling and the water was pretty stirred up so underwater photography was a real challenge. This time Hurricane “Grace” had gone by to the north, but had still managed to stir up the water. Nevertheless, we still went diving. We had a warm day, but the trip out was basically windless and the water was glassy calm. We got out to Silke Caye and received the obligatory briefing from the park ranger about where you can go and where you can’t go within the park. After the briefing the snorkelers stayed on the island of silk caye to snorkel. Calling it an island is probably an exaggeration because it is so small it only has three palm trees and a single camp style toilet.
Meanwhile the divers got back in the boat and we motored out from the island maybe another couple hundred yards to a wall where we did our first dive. We back-rolled off the boat and started down. If you have been to Belize you are probably aware that the segment of the Meso American reef which runs by Belize tends to have a lot of soft corals which include sea fans and and sea whips. Yes, there are hard corals, but oftentimes they are surrounded by the soft corals.
Soft corals are abundant on the Belizean portion of the Meso American Reef
One thing I noticed after a while was that there seemed to be a substantial decrease in the numbers of native fish stock on the dive. There were squirrel fish who were pretty well ensconced in the holes in the reef. But, what I did not see were the large numbers of grunts, snappers and other smaller reef fish such as blue chromis. We did find several lion fish which we speared . We also saw several nurse sharks one of who followed out group for much of the dive.
Squirrel fish swimming over the reef
When we first came across the nurse shark, I thought well if we get one pass we will be pretty lucky. Well fortunately I was wrong. We would swim a ways and he would circle back to check us out. He tended to swim right through the group of divers. So I began dropping down to the level of the soft corals and positioned myself so he would swim right to me. In all he made maybe a dozen passes during the dive. Sometimes he would turn just as he got to my camera. A couple of times he swam under me.
A nurse shark cruising over the soft corals Now you are getting up close and personal And yet another close pass
So at least on the first couple of dives we saw a lot of nurse sharks and soft corals but not as many native species of fish.
Grey reef shark at shark junctionDrafting a whale sharkYes he is in the scrum somewhere!
I will admit that I have been a fan of shark week for as long as it has been on the Discovery channel. Sharks are smart. They have an incredible array of tools for finding prey. They have been on the planet for hundreds of millions of years and they have evolved to fit into many different sub-environments. For many years when I was asked what my favorite animal in the sea was, I typically would respond sharks.
This is why you wear the steel suit
Of course when I was growing up, sharks didn’t always have the best reputation. Flipper, who I watched a lot as a kid, always prevailed over any sharks that strayed into the story line of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Flipper and have always been fascinated by dolphins who also seem to have awesome skills as predators. I have always found big undersea creatures to be interesting. They are necessary to ensure the health of a reef. They typically go very fast through the water.
But, sharks and dolphins share at least one trait, their relative amount of color is pretty limited. Grey and white and tan are excellent colors if you want to blend into the reef. But there are so many other colors that exist on coral reefs that I may have to change my thinking about what my favorite undersea animal is.
Some days I think about all the types of certain critters I have seen and then think that I will probably not see something new on the next trip. It sure is nice to be wrong. During the last trip to Grand Bahama it was awesome to see a loggerhead turtle up close.
I had only seen a loggerhead turtle one other time and that was from a boat deck. The last time I saw one it was only for a brief second because he popped his head up only a few meters ahead of our catamaran and then ducked down again as he saw we were sailing right towards him. I don’t think I have ever seen a turtle move so fast. Now he was never in danger because he would have passed between the two pontoons of the boat without any problem. Nevertheless, because I was close to the front of the boat I could see just how enormous he was. Most turtles I have seen have been maybe a few feet across the bottom of their shell. The fellow who swam under the boat was easily 2 meets across the bottom of his shell. If I had to guess he must have weighed several hundred pounds.
The loggerhead turtle I saw in the Bahamas raced through the dive site, right past a bunch of divers. He was huge — well over 500 pounds.
At first I did not see any reason for why this turtle seemed quite determined to “motor” through the site. It was only after I took the first shot that I saw why. Maybe having a grey reef shark following you is no big deal for a turtle that weighs several hundred pounds.
But then again, maybe having a large shark following you is just an annoyance. I really don’t know, but even if I had a hard shell, I don’t think I would mess around with those teeth. So maybe swimming through the circle of divers was the idea after all. We were the bait.
Oh yeah, the turtle took a right angle after passing me, and the shark just kept swimming straight. Who says turtles are slow.
Not long ago I had an opportunity to do a shark dive off the coast of Grand Bahama.
Our shark wrangler-shark feeder was Olivier. Olivier explained that on the dive we would drop to the bottom about 45 feet below the boat. We would line up with our backs to the Pretender wreck. Apparently the Pretender wreck got its name because there is so little left of the wreck that is just pretends to be a wreck.
Inasmuch I had the “big camera” they wanted me on the end of the line. Olivier explained that he would work his way across the bottom in front of our line and would start feeding at the other end of the line of eight divers. I thought that would be good since it would give me extra time to make sure I had selected the best combination of depth of field and shutter speed that I could use under the existing conditions. Inasmuch as I figured the Sharks would stir up the sand on the bottom, I decided to shoot natural light, but had my video light to throw a little extra light if I needed it.
We had a partly cloudy day with intermittent times when the sun would be exposed and throw a substantial amount of light on the white sandy bottom of the dive site. We would be kneeling during the shark feed.
Olivier explained that he would feed for a while, but then would try to put a shark to sleep and then would allow us to each feel the skin of the shark. He would then massage the shark some more and if the shark was malleable he would be able to lift the shark into a shark stand and then let the shark go.
After Olivier finished briefing the dive he began to put on the chain mail suit which he would use as protection from any shark that might otherwise try to bit him. The chain mail suit reminded me of something you might see on a knight in medieval times. The suit covered him from head to foot and included gloves and boots. All told the suit weighted 25 pound. Olivier said jumping into the water with the suit on was like jumping into the water with a boat anchor attached.
This is why you wear the suit-
Between the suit and the container of fish, Olivier would make a quick drop through the water column to the white sand bottom below. The regulators that would provide air to Olivier during the dive were wrapped in what looked like electrical conduit so that Olivier’s air supply was somewhat protected from an inadvertent shark bite. The BC he was wearing was similar to most BCs but did carry a number of scars from where it had been bitten. While Olivier was gearing up, Shelly the official video-grapher was putting on her chain mail suit and getting ready for the jump.
The Sharks that were expected to show up for the meal were gray reef Sharks. What we saw were about 20- 25 Grey reef sharks and a couple of nurse sharks that converged on the dive site. Olivier had warned us that if any great hammer head sharks showed up, he would call the dive and the dive would be over and he would not continue to feed the Sharks. He explained that a great hammer head shark could make short work of his suit and would be far more to deal with than we would want to do.
Olivier said normally once the feeding was done, he would walk away from the group and the group could search the sand for any shark teeth that had fallen out during the dive.
Before we started the dive, Olivier asked if I would mind taking a few stills of him for his personal collection. He said that after the feed was over when he walked away from the group, I could follow along behind him at a safe distance to take some shots of him feeding the Sharks away from the site. I said sure that sounds like an interesting challenge. Besides I figured I had the benefit of professional curtsy so why worry.
Olivier done feeding-
The guests all geared up and then after the safety divers were in the water we began to drop to the bottom towards the pretender wreck. The Sharks had already begun to congregate in expectation of a meal. They tended to circle in a clockwise circle. As I headed towards the bottom, I started shooting. I figured that I needed to know if the shutter speed and aperture settings I had selected were going to work. I checked the camera display and the settings seemed to be a bit bright when the sun was out, but fine when the sun went behind a cloud. I decided to leave everything as I had set it.
As the divers settled towards the bottom, we lined up in a line on our knees in front of the Pretender Wreck. Not long after the last diver was lined up, Olivier appeared from behind a large coral head. It was no surprise to see him because just before he landed on the bottom the 20+ Sharks whom we had been watching changed their course to get closer to Oliver near the other coral head. I can only imagine that Olivier’s BC was struggling to keep him off the bottom based on the weight of the suit and the feeding container. It was not Olivier’s usual perfect body position in the water, but he made it work to move the 20 or so yards over to the pretender wreck. Shelly was right behind him taking video as Olivier made his way over. While they were trying to get into place, the Sharks continued to circle. Now instead of one or two at a time they were stacked up 3 or 4 abreast swimming through the site. Oliver began feeding the Sharks.
The action was fast and furious. At times Olivier would disappear in what looked like a shark vortex. Among the Sharks, there were horse eyed jacks and some yellow tailed snappers. All were looking for a free meal. Only the Sharks were big enough to muscle their way into the vortex to try to get in line for food.
Yes he is in the scrum somewhere!
After a while Oliver selected a smaller shark, maybe only 5 feet in length to try to put to sleep. He was successful and brought the shark around to the divers so anyone who wanted to feel shark shin could. I kept shooting.
Shark stand-
After the main feed was over, I followed Olivier over towards the other coral head. I thought I was relatively far away, but Shelly made sure I stayed a bit farther back. Probably a good thing, since I was the only one in the frame without a chain mail suit. The action continued to be fast. At one point I had to stop shooting because the memory card had slowed down because there were too many shots stacked on top of one another to load to the card. I paused and let the memory card catch up and then started shooting again. What a blast. For someone who likes fast action, this was definitely fast. I kept watching and seeing different shots to take. In an ordinary dive of an hour or so, I take maybe 60 to 70 shots which usually gives my strobes a huge work out. On this dive without using strobes I shot a total of 320 stills and 10 video clips. Would I do it again – of course. Now I just need to figure out when.
I was thinking about the dives we did in Nassau and it occurred to me that it was some of the most diverse, and productive diving I have had a chance to do. Day 1 we spent a fair amount of time diving with gray reef sharks. Even before the feeding began the sharks were remarkably cooperative in positioning themselves so that they made interesting models.
Grey reef shark swimming overhead
The first day we did two shark divers at shark junction with the Stuart Cove dive shop. Dive one was pretty mellow and while there were quite a few sharks, the 18 divers on the boat never got particularly close to the sharks since they were curious, but at best aloof. The second dive was a shark feed and it was interesting to watch the sharks come in and be fed. There was quite a bit of bumping and jostling for position by the sharks. The divers were all pretty well out of the line of swimming, except for the shark feeder and the photographers who had chain mail suits.
Here is a brief video from the shark feed.
And did I mention the wrecks? There are lots of them and many of them have appeared in one or more movies.
And some of the wrecks are just interesting because their structure has an amazing amount of growth that has accumulated on them.
As shark week approaches it occurred to me that I have had a chance to dive with quite a few varieties of sharks, and I am not talking about the two legged variety. I hope that I will never forget the first time I saw bull sharks. They are incredibly beautiful animals that move through the water column easier than most people breath. They are so efficient under water a very small flick of the tail will carry them forward with incredible speed.
From fast to enormous size was the next set of sharks with which I had a chance to interact. The first time I jumped out of the boat with my camera in hand I had not even had a chance to turn around entirely when I saw this incredible mouth, almost 6 feet across, coming directly at me. I kicked for all I was worth trying to get out of the way only to realize later that with a small flick of the whale shark’s tail he could easily avoid me. So much for my swimming skills.
Drafting a whale shark
It was not until I traveled to Ambergris Caye in Belize that I really had a chance to watch a number of active nurse sharks. Sure I had seen nure sharks laying on the bottom napping while I was diving, but I had not really seen them actively moving around a reef until I was in Belize. Although many people think of nurse sharks as fairly “tame” you still need to be careful because they are big animals and can create some problems if their space is not respected.
The Bahamas gave me an opportunity to interact with grey reef sharks. They are very fast predators and they have a mouth full of teeth, but unless they are being fed they tend be to fairly shy about divers.
This is why you wear the steel suit
Grey reef sharks I think are very photogenic sharks. They are innately curious and will often give divers at least a quick look before they go back to looking for more interesting food.
The most recent type of shark I came across off of the Kona coast. A white tip reef shark. At least the one I found was about 5 feet in length, a juvenile and he was not interesting in hanging out with divers. I barely got a couple of shots off before he was long gone. And, even then he was pretty well hidden in the shadows.
One of the many sharks at Shark Junction
Maybe on my next set of dives I will get a chance to see a tiger shark. I guess we will see if we are so fortunate.
Some dives are just awesome. The captain had just handed down my camera and I was continuing to clip the camera to my BC when I looked down. Fifty feet below I could see gray reef sharks swimming over the reef. Waiting the couple of minutes for my buddy to roll into the water and be ready to drop down to the reef seemed like an eternity. Since my buddy had had some issues equalizing her ears on the first dive I paused before dropping down, just to make sure I didn’t pass her on the way down.
On the way down, I was turning on the strobes, the camera and the focus light and my video light. I was still 25 feet from the bottom when I turned on the video light and started the video running. For the next 11 minutes all I did was breath, refocus the camera and try to keep up with the action. I lost count of the number of sharks that swam through the site. We weren’t feeding the sharks so I didn’t have to huddle up and kneel in the sand, yeh. Instead I was free to swim slowly and try to keep up with the action.
There were some small male sharks who swam through at various times. the big females were amazing, easily 6 to 8 feet in length. They were such graceful swimmers words do not do them justice.
One of the many sharks at Shark Junction
Mid way through filming, there was a large black grouper who was easily 200 pounds who swam through. He was quite a contrast to the sharks. Large bodied sharks could turn on a dime and still give you 9 cents back. The black grouper turned more like an old Cadillac– slow and steady.
A 200 plus pound Black Grouper at Shark Junction
We also saw a school of horse-eyed jacks. They are so graceful and their silver bodies glimmer in the water. Here is a short video with the sharks and the horse-eyed jacks.
So would I go back to Shark Junction in the Bahamas, absolutely.
Several years ago I was in Playa del Carmen Mexico doing some diving. We had done a few dives when the owner of the dive shop told us that if we wanted to we could do a dive where the bull sharks often were. My dive buddy decided that she did not want to go. My kids were glad. One of them said before the dive, at least we will go home with one parent. As it was there was one other diver who signed up for the dive. I had not seen him dive before, so I did not know what to expect.
Before we got in the water Massimo, the dive leader, suggested that we clear our ears before we rolled into the water because we would want to make a negative descent or at least get to the bottom as fast as we could. Of course the challenge was I would have to go back to the boat to get my camera before I started my descent. Nevertheless, the drop down to the sand 93 feet below was uneventful. We were maybe a mile off shore and the bottom was all white sand and it looked like we were going to the beach. At first I was concerned that we might get to the bottom and see very little but white sand. I was wrong. No sooner had we had hit the bottom, but a ray with a jack fish swam by hunting for food. Moments later the bull sharks began to come in to check us out. My dive buddy and I were kneeling back to back watching for sharks and Mossimo was a few feet away watching us and looking for sharks.
At first, juvenile male bull sharks came in to look us over. They were a little bit skittish but they would swim by us turn and then swim off. After a few moments the large pregnant female bull sharks came in to see what we were up to. They would swim in and get fairly close and briefly circle to see if we had food. We didn’t.
After a few more moments Mossimo motioned for us to follow him so we would swim up the “sandy beach” and so we could do a multi-level dive. After a few moments he had put a little more distance between him and us. He did that to see if the sharks would swim between us. They did. Meanwhile, a shark that swam by us, crapped on my buddy. Immediately, a remora from the shark buzzed my buddy and put a fin in is hair. My buddy thought he had been bitten and was completly “wigged out”. Fortunately, I had shot a picture of the romora as it came off the shark so I turned my camera around and showed him the romora that had buzzed him. He calmed down a bit and we continued the dive.
By now, I had counted over 20 bull sharks. Mossimo was signaling us that it was time to head up to the boat. We slowly ascended, all the while watching to see if the sharks rose in the water column to follow us. Things seemed pretty much under control when we got to the boat. I helped my buddy get out of his gear and handled it up to the captain. I had just handed my camera up to the captain when Mossimo said we needed to get in the boat. I looked down and the sharks were starting to swim up the water column. I kicked up, grabbed the boat’s gunnel and pulled myself into the boat, with my kit still on. Mossimo got in seconds later. I looked down and the sharks were heading back down towards the bottom. The ride back to the shop was uneventful and gave me a chance to think about how cool it had been to see such big animals and think, I’ve got to do some more shark dives.
You might think that trying to keep up with a whale shark while wearing fins and a wetsuit should be an easy task. Maybe it was the camera I was dragging around; maybe I was having a bad day, but I quickly found out that if I didn’t get in close to the head of the whale shark, there was no way I was going to stay with, let along move up on a whale shark. Whale sharks move at maybe 3-5 knots an hour. Who would think that an animal that is 20 feet or more in length and who grazes on planton could move so quickly and gracefully through the water. Nevertheless, even a modest sized whale shark is much faster in the water than I am, even with fins.
I had a chance to swim with whale sharks near Isle Mujeres Mexico, which is relatively close to Cancun. We were on a boat with about a dozen other people. They would let two peole go in the water at a time. We would go in the water, swim around the whale sharks for a while, and then get back in the boat and wait for our next turn. Any time any of the other people on the boat decided they did not want to take a turn swimming with the sharks, I was glad to get back in and try to shoot still images of the sharks. If I go back, I will probably shoot stills and video. Whale sharks are amazing animals and remarkably maneuverable.
Now in contrast I wouldn’t even think about trying to keep up with a reef shark. They are just too fast. I shudder to think what it might be like to swim with a mako shark such as the one that was clocked at 42 mph. I’d have a better chance of keeping up with a cheetah. Nope ain’t going to happen. And, the frustrating part is that I can’t even use a “long lens” to try to bring the image in closer. They just don’t make an underwater port that will house a 400mm or larger lens.
Ever have one of those moments where you can anticipate what may happen next? One of the things that I try to do to increase the odds of getting close to wild life in order to take close up pictures is to watch the animals move about and then try to anticipate their next move. We had been diving in Ambergris Caye for about a week and had seen quite a few nurse sharks. Nurse sharks are bottom feeders and are pretty docile creatures. I was hoping that on this dive we would get pretty close to a nurse shark so I could get an image of how they swim.
Our dive master had speared a lion fish earlier in the dive, but otherwise the dive had been pretty uneventful. We swam over a coral finger and I saw a nurse shark swimming some lazy circles around a large coral head. It occurred to me that if my estimate of when and where our dive group would crest the the next coral finger, that we might just get pretty close to the nurse shark. In my mind I figured out the angle I would need to swim to put the rest of the dive group between me and where thought the nurse shark would next finish a circle — at the top of the next coral finger.
The sun was behind some clouds that day so I knew I would have to be pretty close to where the shark would come over the ridge of the coral finger otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a shot. My strobes only have an effective range of about 4-6 feet depending on visibility and other factors. I was shooting close focus wide angle which means that if I am more than a few feet away from my subject I would get tenie tiny images that wouldn’t be well lit.
My dive buddy saw me take off on a right angle away from the group and then turn around. I then just coasted over the the side of the coral finger and waited for the rest of the group to reach of the crest of the ridge. The shark came over the ridge pretty close to where I thought he would and one of the divers reached the crest at about the same time. I would have liked to have been a little closer, but at 100% you can read the dials on the surprised diver’s guages.
Here is a link to video of nurse sharks in Ambergris Caye Belize:
Some days I think about all the types of certain critters I have seen and then think that I will probably not see something new on the next trip. It sure is nice to be wrong. During the last trip to Grand Bahama it was awesome to see a loggerhead turtle up close. 
