Shark!!!

While I was in the US, I got to take a dive trip down to Jupiter, Florida. I've dove out of Jupiter before, but never on the charter that I was on. It was a great time and we saw above-average diving for the east coast of Florida. I've uploaded a photoset with a combination of above and under water pictures from my father, mother, and brother.

One of the things I get asked the most about my diving by non-divers is how close you get to sharks when you're under. To help illustrate it, here are a couple of videos from this last trip. I'll say that the sharks were no where near as aggressive as I've seen and are about what we see most of the time.

Galen and I were heads down taking some pictures of reef fish when I stuck my head up and did a 360. I noticed this shark just sort of tracking us curiously. Nothing aggressive and you can see that as soon as we turned and saw him, he headed away. There isn't really any scale, but he's about 5 feet long and about 40 feet away.


This one on the other hand was much, much closer. The dive master noticed a group of three nurse sharks hiding under a ledge (they are one of the few sharks that doesn't have to swim to breath and they like to lie together) and we all crowded round. The first two sharks got away pretty quickly, but we had inadvertently cornered this pregnant female. I'm the body directly on the other side of the shark as the camera pans, so we were pretty close. :)


You can see that even cornered, all the shark wants to do is get away. It does help that the nurse shark is incredibly docile with 27 attacks and no deaths since 1580.

Hopefully this gives everyone an idea of what it's like underwater and convinces some of you that it's worth it to take up diving. Anywhere, anytime, just give me a call.