October 3, 2006
I had been hearing about people diving under shrimp boats in places like Florida and Louisiana for a few years now. I had never tried it, but I always wanted to. Well I got my shot today, and I am hooked! Shrimp boat diving is so exciting, and the potential for great images and wild encounters with big sharks is amazing. And every day is different out there, so you never know what you are going to get. We got out to the shrimping grounds kind of late, so most of the boats had already cleaned off their by-catch. So it took us a little while to find a boat that had some sharks on it.We went to ten different shrimp boats to find sharks. There were schools of dolphin at every boat, but no sharks. I am guessing the big dolphins were intimidating and scaring the sharks away. Finally we found a small school of sharks at one of the stops. Blacktip sharks and Atlantic sharpnose sharks were hanging around under the boat. I spent two hours in the water chasing them around filming and photographing them. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed myself. The guys who worked on the boat kept telling us stories like, "you should have been here two days ago, or three days ago. We were covered with sharks."
Hearing stories like that just get me all pumped up to get back out there to find more sharks. They just kept talking about huge schools of duskies coming through there, as well as tigers, bulls and hammerheads. I can only imagine what it would be like when you have 70 plus sharks circling the boat. It must be like heaven.
Anyway, the official tally for the day was; four porky blacktip sharks, and anywhere between 15-20 Atlantic sharpnose sharks. It was not an extrodinary day out there, but I can see the potential for amazing days out there. I am really looking forward to getting back out there to do it again. Who knows what we will find on our next dive...maybe a tiger shark! That would be cool.
Next scheduled trip (weather permitting) October 21-22, 2006
