What a week for sharks here in Hawaii! On our first snorkel at Shark Fin Rock, our small boat noticed a dolphin about 30ft away from me at the surface. So I quickly headed that way. I caught a glimpse of it as it swam away, but then was happy to see another headed my way. However, I quickly realized it was not another dolphin, it was a big pelagic shark! It looked like a sandbar shark while I was in the water, but after looking at the photos I'm not quite sure. It may be an oceanic black tip. I followed it for a minute, then it turned right towards me. I snagged a couple of photos with my little olympus tough waterproof point and shoot camera.
Rare encounter with a large shark off in the blue.
This was a about a six to seven foot shark swimming with me.
Seeing white tip reef sharks is much more common for snorkelers around Hawaii. We saw six of them at our snorkel spots this week!
It is still rare to find even white tips, I was pretty excited.
I've been checking under this ledge at Kealakekua Bay all season to see if a shark was there. Today there finally was! And a second shark came in to join while we watched.
The two white tips in the cave came out, swam in circles, then cruised off into the deep.
Later in the snorkel we were joined by another white tip reef shark in about two feet of water! I had not seen them this shallow at Kealakekua before.
White tip reef sharks in the shallows.
Shark swimming right under a snorkeler at Kealakekua Bay.
Larger shark spotted off in the deep.
White tip reef sharks cruising over the reef.
Because we were seeing so many sharks this week, I gave the guests my 'Truth About Sharks" presentation one evening. It was a noticeable change in their shark tolerance to acceptance to excitement over the course of the week. By the end, if someone shouted 'shark!', all of our group would come swimming over to join in the viewing fun!
Check out the location of Kealakekua Bay where we snorkeled here on pinmapple's interactive blog map: [//]:# (!pinmapple 19.48125 lat -155.93276 long Shark Snorkel d3scr)
Keep traveling and learning,
- Dai Mar