I have been traveling to Tiger Beach, Bahamas for the past six years and every trip is special and different for very different reasons. There have been so many moments and memories - some were good, some were great. But I can honestly say I have never had a bad trip out there. But after six years and 20 plus trips you would think I would be jaded and burnt out, or that I have been there, done that. But all I can say is hell no - these trips are always full of surprises, and my Febraury trip was just that - one monster surprise. In my opinion this was one of the very best big animal adventures out to the Bahamas that I have ever experienced...
It started out as a typical trip out to the Northern Bahamas, we left West Palm Beach, Florida and made the over night trek to West End Grand Bahamas to check in with customs. When you wake up in the morning after an all night crossing of the Gulf Stream and see West End in the morning light, thats when it finally sinks in for me that I have left the world of wrist watches, work schedules, and the silliness of keeping up with the Jones - and entered the free life, where the only thing that matters is perfect sunsets, laughing with good friends, and seeing lots and lots of sharks. I was invited on this trip by a great group of friends from Mexico to help wrangle in the sharks and aid in making sure everyone had a safe and sane trip. Not a bad way to spend the week.
We sat at port for a few hours, customs was behind schedule today, which is typical because we are on island time - they only check the time twice a day here it seems - day time and night time. But today customs was later than usual and we had to wait a long time, so when we took off I was pretty skeptical about us seeing a tiger today. Tiger sharks are normally pretty shy and take a while to warm up to us, and since we had arrived at tiger beach late in the day I was not confident that they would show up. And since tigers are also very reluctant to hang around on our night dives, I thought the day was a bust for tigers.
Beautiful lemon sharks.
But I had my lemons to reacquaint myself with. The lemons are such great sharks, so beautiful and such amazing sharks to interact with. Dropping down I began searching for my favorite sharks, Taxi, Scratch, Cindy, Gills, Scar, Brown Coat, Rocky. I am always hoping to see them, hoping they are all right and doing well. I love them all, although I do admit that Taxi and Cindy are my favorites. I dropped down with a bait crate excited to be back in the water with my sharks, excited to show my friends on the trip with me these sharks...hell I was just excited. Once I settled into a spot, the lemons all began to investigate the crate, the first shark that I recognized was gills, she came in to claim her spot as one of the top sharks in the pecking order. I scanned the water and recognized, scar, scratch, Rocky, and then finally Cindy came in. She looked really good and healthy despite having a tumor on her jaw caused by a fisherman who hooked and released her but in the process broke her jaw and now its deformed and she can't open her mouth very wide, which makes feeding difficult. My fear is without the dive operators coming out to give scraps she would eventually starve to death. So far so good, I have seen her the past 3 seasons. I hope she will be around for many years to come.
Me and Taxi
It took a little while but Taxi finally came in and once she made the first couple of passes she got back into the groove and we started our games. Taxi loves to have her nose rubbed a specific way, unique to the other lemons at TB, she doesn't like me to grab her nose, she prefers for me to hold my hand flat so she can thrash her head back and forth on it, feeling my hand on her course nose. She will do this over and over. I am smiling as I write this, just thinking about it, love and miss that shark. It kills me to think that the rest of the world sees nothing but a dumb animal thats nothing but a killing machine. These intimate moments show me that there is so much more going on, beyond our understanding.
Expedition leader, Alberto Friscione
The day wore on and we dropped down for our second and final dive of the day. During our first dive we had a tiger out in the peripherals but she was not too interested in coming in. But during our second dive the tiger shark we named Hook had come in to see what was going on. Hook was the tiger I spent most of my time with this past December on our TB trip. She was very stand offish and testy then and was very weary of us divers. My guess was that she was still tramatized from a fisherman who had hooked her and broken the right side of her jaw. On this trip, she was much more relaxed and not so stand offish, a good sign for this great shark. I offered up a few scraps to her and she rolled into it. I was happy, we had a tiger on our first day. I looked around at everyone and cameras were firing like crazy. I could see thumbs up coming from all different directions. I just smiled, this was what I lived for - showing people sharks and feeling their energy and excitement. I love my job.
Tiger roll.
The dive wore on and dusk was setting. Most of the group had already returned to the boat, and there was just a few of us in the water. During the dive I started hearing clicking noises, which was of course dolphin. It is not uncommon to hear dolphins passing by, somewhere in the distance. However this time the dolphins sounded really close, I started scanning the water to look for them, they sounded that close. Then they sounded really close. I looked straight up and a pod of dolphins was directly above us. I looked at Armando who was shooting video and pointed up. He was busy shooting a passing lemon shark, so I swam over to him hard and grabbed his arm. I startled him and I pointed up, he looked up and I could feel his body react to the dolphins. I sank back into the sand and watched the show. As I expected, a lemon came up to try and herd the dolphins away. Lemons are very good at trying to defend their feeding ground and they will always try their best to push other sharks, and now I know, other animals away.
Dolphins visit tiger beach.
I was blown away, I have heard dolphins clicking sounds here at Tb before, but this was the first time they had ever shown themselves, to me at least. Light was fading fast and I resumed feeding and interacting with the sharks. During the dive I had just finished feeding a lemon shark and I turned around and laying right next to me was this huge turtle. I was blown away and thinking what the hell? I remember thinking, "Uh dude, there is a few tigers swimming around, just FYI." So this turtle stayed for a few minutes, getting bumped around by lemons and then finally just started walking away. I thought that was awesome, a great freaking day. A few minutes later the turtle returned and again just laid there next to me and the bait box.
Our turtle named Paul.
It did this a few more times and then would swim off. The light really started fading and finally the sun dropped behind the water and finally set. I hate missing sunsets here, but to miss one because I was diving was worth it. So our dusk dive turned into a night dive. The best part was the tiger shark never left. Something that I had not seen in a few years diving here was a tiger shark during a night dive. The last time that happened was 3 or 4 years ago, and we had two tigers, 7 lemons and two bull sharks (another great day at TB). So I was pretty pumped about having a tiger shark stick around for the night dive, and what was better was the tiger coming in to feed and interact with me, was a dream.
feeding a tiger at night.
So we were deep into our night dive, my friends that were in the water with me at the time were having an amazing first day. Here we were on a night dive with a tiger and I thought we were not going to see any tigers today. It was awesome. During the dive what surprised me even more was turing around to see my buddy Paul the turtle, laying next to me. I named him Paul, in honor of my buddy and SDM shooter Paul Spielvogel. I wanted to give him a good scratch but also figured there was just too much traffic to divert my attention to a turtle.
Interacting with a tiger at night. Beautiful baby girl.
We finished the day and celebrated the moment...it really was a great first day of amazing diving. Sharks, dolphins, turtles. a night dive with tigers, something that is really hard to do. And the best part is it was all on one dive site. These are the days that get talked about for years to come. You can do countless dives around the world, but when you retell tales, certain dives come up, or certain moments..this was one of those days.
We woke up the next day to 3 or 4 tigers, don't even remember anymore. But the visibility was great and the day was really good. The sharks were all well behaved and everyone was having a great time shooting. I remember Armando walking up to me during one of our surface intervals saying this was a great trip, but for this trip to be perfect we need a great hammerhead. The pressure was back on to perform. That evening the group decided they wanted to go and find dolphins for a night dive. Everyone knows I am not much of a dolphin person, but this was not my trip, I was just along for the ride. But I do have to admit something, I was pretty enthused about seeing some dolphins, thought it would be a fun way to spend the evening. It was either that or watch movies, and someone hid the Firefly series, so I was just not in a movie mood.
Night dive with the dolphins
So we left TB and went off into the night seeking out dolphin. We found a pod within an hour or so of searching for them. It is wild watching dolphins slamming flying fish by the boat. The dolphin use the lights to help them hunt because the flying fish are attracted to the light, so we get swarmed by flying fish, and the dolphin come in to feed on the disoriented fish. The best part of the night was hearing someone yell, sailfish! We had a sailfish chasing a small baitball under our boat. Man I thought sailfish were beautiful during the day, but at night the sailfish's colors were just glowing. It was beautiful.
beautiful flying fish. I love these guys.
The rest of the trip was spent mixing it up between dolphins and sharks. Going back and forth shooting sharks most of the day then heading out at night to look for dolphins. Of course on our last night dive of the trip we did have another exciting visitor, a young silky shark came in to say hello. It was a beautiful little shark, and unfortunately it did not stay long. The dolphins were dropping down on it and biting its tail to push it away.
silky shark
Playing with tiger and a lemon shark
We did spend one of the days with dolphins. We went out to the dolphin grounds and played with the same dolphins we were seeing in the evenings. This was a lot of fun and interesting to see these dolphins trying to interact with us. They would swim circles around us, and stayed around us the entire time. I am so used to dolphins taking off, and running when ever we jump in the water this was just cool thing to experience.
spotted dolphins
The rest of the week was just as exciting, we tried out different spots and spent the end of our trip at a new spot, I am calling Shark Reef, for lack of a better name. But at this spot we had tigers, reef sharks, lemons, nurse sharks aaaannnd, a great hammerhead! Yes I wish I could post an image of it, but there really was not a really good image taken during the trip as it was a fly by. The hammer came in, cruised by and left. But it was enough time for us to see it, snap a few images, and get a good video clip of it. What mattered most was that the shark showed up, and show up it did. The great hammerhead came in on day 4 I believe, and then on our last day - our last dive, as we were saying good bye to the countless reef sharks, 20 plus lemons, 7 tiger sharks, one fiesty nurse shark, a great hammer appeared out of the blue, cruised by us, gave us all a really good look at her, and then she just disappeared back into the blue. She came in as if she was representing the sharks of Tiger beach and saying thank you for stopping by. This was such an amazing adventure, one that we will probably never experience again...but then again, you just never know?
A special thank you goes out to Alberto Friscione for putting together this trip, and to everyone who was out there with us on this amazing "Viva Mexico" dive adventure - un abrazo grande!
