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. As often happens, it just so happened that 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 I could find camera settings that had been used, for the most part, 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. 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 shoot the lens behind a 9 inch Zen dome and the optical characteristics are 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, it’s enormous, and weighs quite a bit. My camera rig without the Zen dome weighs in at about 35 pounds. TheZen dome adds another 3 pounds. 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 I liked had been shot on full fame DSLR cameras. The ISO’s had been set at between 100 and 400 apparently depending upon the light. 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 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.

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 last 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 the shot. It seemed to me that the reality was that because the sharks were coming in to be fed there were divers in the shot.

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 with which they came to the feed. 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.

So for each pass by the hammerhead they do get part of a fish fed to them. the shark feeder pirouettes around to give the audience a view of just how fast and strong the hammerheads are. on each pass the shark feeder hands out a fish bit for the shark to eat. occasionally the hammerhead misses the fish bit but usually not for long.

After the shark receives his fish but most of the time the shark went off of the nearly right angle towards the surface. But not always. Sometimes the shark with swim off out about the same level as the shark feeder. In those instances it off and look like the shark feeder was moonwalking with her back away from the shark

In reality the shark feeder was probably just taking a breath and backing up a little bit to gain perspective on how to address the next feeding shark. For an improvised dance that is not choreographed, it is remarkable to watch.

Familiarity with the hammerheads is obviously a very important advantage that the shark feeder has. Feeding hammerheads is not for the faint of heart. And not for amateurs. For it would be far too easy to become a four fingered shark feeder.