December 8, 2008
Our first day of diving; we arrived at Tiger beach later than we expected too. The Gulf Stream crossing was rougher than the Captain anticipated, so he had to take it slow. The boat was rocking and rolling as we motored through. I admit, I had a few moments where I wished I had my mask and fins in bed with me. Anyway we managed to dive a couple of times before the day ended. The lemons were here to greet us, and by the end of day one; we had more than thirty lemon sharks swimming around. The tigers were also here but they were a bit shy today and did not want to play. We had two large tiger sharks occasionally popping in and out of view. I filmed a tiger with a small school of bait fish hanging around her face. I had never seen a tiger covered with fish like that, so it was pretty exciting to see.

Our last dive turned into a dusk dive, which turned into a night dive. This is pretty eager and enthusiastic group, and they wanted to dive as much as possible. Only Paul Spielvogel and I have dove with tigers before, so the rest of our guests were excited and nervous about seeing a tiger shark. As usual I am anxious about getting some tigers for our guests to interact with. It is always hard for me to get comfortable until we get a few tigers that are solid players. We did not have any players today, so tomorrow I hope the tigers come in? I probably won’t get much sleep tonight, I am too anxious.

Of course for the action to get good, we needed a solid player - but hey this is the ocean and not a zoo, we get what the ocean offers for the day. You always hope that she will produce a player or two. The shark stayed, but would disappear for a while, then it would come in for a minute or two, then disappear again.

On my second dive the tiger shark was more comfortable with the divers, but decided that the bait box that was buoyed away from the boat was too busy with divers so she decided to hang around underneath the boat where the lemons were being fed.

The vis was mucked up by lemons, tigers, and divers stirring up the sand. But still a fun dive

It was not long before two more tiger sharks rolled in, and it was on, we got our players! The tiger sharks gave everyone a show, and for the next 4 hours the tigers stayed around looking for scraps. This was the dive I was hoping for, some solid players and everyone had an opportunity to interact with a few tigers. This is the part of my job that I love…listening to the stories and the chatter from everyone after they came out of the water today. Today is the kind of day that I write about, everyone was fired up and excited. A couple of my guests read my trip report from our November trip, in fact they said they read it about 100 times, so I was happy that on day 2 they got to experience what they have been reading about. It was not the same dive, because everyday is different, and every interaction is different, but this is the kind of day we write about.

Some of the divers dove more than 5 times with each dive around an hour and a half long, so they were pretty tired at the end of the day. Despite being tired over half the boat wanted to try the night dive. So they dropped in and came back up with a report that the tiger shark was still around. The tigers normally do not hang around at night soit was an added bonus. The tiger surprised one of our guests, Edwardo by coming in very close, which scared the hell out of him, but he got some footage, and was super excited with the encounter. Today was a great day of diving, and I am excited that we still have 3 more days to go. Let’s see what tomorrow brings? I will be able to sleep a little better tonight.

-Eldad and Tza Chi from Israel
-Ken and Richard from the UK
-Edwardo, Rocio and Jero from Mexico City, MX
-Ed, Randy, JD, PJ, and Richard rounded out our US crew

I have dove with Randy and Ed before, they joined me on our mako/blue shark dive in California, but I was sharing my first adventure with the others on this trip- I love meeting new people. There is nothing like a good boat trip to truly get to know people. Not much down time on this trip, no one is wasting anytime and everyone is diving hard, all day. Most averaging something like 5 dives a day, that are between 1 ½ hours to 2 hours. By dinner time, everyone is ready for bed.

So anyway, reports from their dive came back that only lemons were hanging around. I dropped in and went out to our buoyed bait box and found a tiger hanging back somewhere in the distance. I decided to bring a bait box down to the seabed so I could toss out some scraps for the tiger to chew on. By bringing the box down myself, I could possibly monitor the bait and keep the lemons from eating it all before the tigers moved in. My plan worked and it was not long before a tiger came in and was sniffing around the sand for bait. She was one of the sharks that visited us yesterday. She was somewhere between 10-11 feet long with a rusty hook in her mouth. She was a young shark but bore some mating scars in her flesh, which was great to see. I have never seen a male tiger shark in these waters, only females, but many of the females that I have seen here do have mating scars so male tigers are somewhere out there, just not at Tiger beach. Interesting territorial behavior going on here.

The extra bait box worked well and we kept our tiger around and got plenty of very close up interaction shots. I had a couple of long pieces of bait and decided to hand feed them to the tiger for some in your face interaction shots. It was a lot of fun. The shark was very well behaved, so it made approaching her easy. Tigers are much easier to feed than other species of sharks. Reef sharks are very nervous, kind of bitey, and move very fast, so I am never truly comfortable hand feeding them, it’s never safe. Lemons are pretty easy to feed, as long as there are not a lot of them. But when there is, it is not easy, and you don’t feel safe. Blue sharks are fun to feed, I don’t have a problem hand feeding them - but makos are not, because they move so damn fast, and they thrash and tear up the bait, which makes it easy to lose sight of them in the bubbles and fish blood, so I prefer not to feed them too often. Tigers are just very well behaved and mellow sharks, and a joy to interact with. I know this may all sound weird to some people, but this is the life of a professional shark diver... or at least this is how it often is in my world.

From the feeder, straight to the shooter- a bitchin' sequence!

I brought a second box down and again the tiger came in to investigate our bait box. We were able to get some great close up images of the tiger as she weaved in and out of the divers that were kneeling in the sand. The tiger was totally hardwired to seek out scraps in the sand and had no interest in any of the divers.

She stayed around until all the bait was gone, and I was very sparing with how much I was giving her, I was trying to keep her around as long as possible.

A second tiger shark showed up and was cruising around in the distance, so I brought down a third bait box, but this time nothing I could do would bring in the tigers. They had no interest in the bait and continued to stay in the distance. I loved it, this just proves that the tigers control whether they will interact with divers or not. They remain totally wild and nothing we do will get them acclimated to humans like say the reef sharks, or the lemons that we often encounter. They CHOOSE to interact with us, when they want, how they want - as the way it should be. I fed the rest of the bait to the lemons which is much more intense; a group of feeding lemons do get riled up pretty easily, but I did it, to see if the tigers would come in. They did not want to.

A lemon swallowing a chunk of fish

After a full day of diving we were all exhausted from hours and hours of diving, but we still had a few takers for our night dive. Our ‘Sixgill in Seattle’ boys (Ed, Randy, JD, and PJ) decided to do the night dive. They are a good group of veteran divers and a lot of fun to dive with. They have dedicated their lives to diving as often as they can, regardless of vis, or conditions. Spending most of their time seeking out as many encounter with sixgills as humanly possible… before they are gone. Sixgills in the Puget Sound are getting harder and harder to encounter, they are just not there anymore. But the night dive paid off, and a tiger shark showed up to say hello to them. So far it has been two for two on the night dive, tiger sharks were around both nights. Ed logged his number 1,000 dive on this one.

So we just sat around all day eating, napping, or watching movies. It was a long boring day. But it gave everyone a chance to work on photos and download footage, so we made the most of the time. Towards the end of the day our friends from Mexico City, Edwardo and Rocio, (a brother and sister team), and their cousin Jero, decided to go swimming. We all went out to watch them jumping off the upper deck, doing back flips, having fun, making the most of the day.

While we were out there I look out onto the starboard side of the boat, and see a shark swimming by, I thought it was a lemon, but Captain Scott noticed it did not have the second dorsal fin, and it was too big and colorful to be a reef shark. We determined it was a tiger shark. I went running for my swim trunks, threw on my mask and fins, I jumped in, hoping to get a glimpse of the tiger. Ed and PJ also jumped in trying to see the shark. There was less than 5 feet of vis and the dusk was turning dark pretty quick, so after 10 minutes of searching, ghosts of imaginary tiger sharks were surprising us from below. When you’re out there, no matter how much experience you have, your mind begins to play tricks on you, and so we all decided to end our search and get out. It is not the sharks you see that are scary… it’s the sharks you don’t see.”

The bad vis got the best of us and we decided it was smarter to leave this tiger shark alone

I hope tomorrow’s weather will be better; we all want to finish this trip with a bang!

This was another great trip, and despite the stromy weather that blew through we still had some great days of diving, with countless lemon sharks, and 10 different tiger sharks. A huge thanks goes out to the Captain and his crew of the Shark Chaser I, for making this trip possible, and to all my guests thank you so much for joining us on this adventure. I hope to see you again out in the world - somewhere...anywhere.

December 2008 graduating class-miss you guys already!

Till then!

To read about our November 2008 trip report, click here.

To learn more about our 2009 Tiger Shark trips click here.