September 10, 2018
We had no interest in diving with sharks. In fact, it’s against our religion, but in a momentary lapse, we ended up surrounded by voraciously feeding bull sharks. (If you can, watch this full-screen at the highest resolution to feel like you’re there (not responsible for soiled garments or persistent nightmares)).
We went with Aqua-Trek and they couldn’t have been better. The shop was professional and the guides were amazing. (The only problem was the loud, clanging noise when the guides walked 😉
One of the guides took our camera for a bit to get closer shots for us. You can tell the video he shot. He doesn’t duck behind a rock when the sharks swim at him! I couldn’t help it. I guess my survival instinct is strong.
We saw huge bull sharks, lemon sharks, silver tips and black tips. Despite being around these infamous bull sharks, we were never really afraid. We felt very protected by our guides at all times. We have never been fans of sharks and we thought this dive might help us acclimatize to their presence. I think it worked. Near the the end of the second dive, we were approached by a black tip. “Ppppppppp. You are not scary!” we said to him. (As in the french: Ppppppp, sis is not ze good bread!)
Oh yea, there was also a 100+ kilo grouper and two really terrific wrecks, but the sharks made these an afterthought. As a wreck dive alone, this dive would have been five stars. For the fish, five stars too, but the sharks stole the show. We didn’t get the tiger sharks that sometimes show up, but we weren’t sad about that. We had all the excitement we could handle.
The above pictures are screenshots from the video we took on the dive. The quality isn’t great, but you get the idea. — Rich
The Camera: We used our relatively new YI Lite Action Camera on this dive. For about $120 US, including the housing, this is a really nice little camera. We’ve had some problems with it but a firmware update seems to have taken care of those. We’ve also found that the only good video we get is with the camera in its factory-default mode (1080 at 60fps). I edited the video in Photoshop, adjusting levels to make the water look clearer than it did in the original video – more like it was in real life.
