The SEABOB is a luxury seatoy designed for “fun in the sun.” Corporate divers or technical divers are not invited to this party—unless they are vacationing, of course. No, this is a unit for scuba divers, free-divers or snorkelers, and meant to be purely recreational.
Like a fashion model up on the catwalk, great hammerhead sharks sashay into one’s field of vision, and, if they were human, you would probably say they have just “made an entrance”. Their strange mallet-like head, robust body girth and tall sickle-shaped dorsal fin make them well-nigh instantly recognisable, and most other sharks in the immediate area spot that too and give them a wide berth.
A fifty-minute flight southeast from the bustle, cruise ships and tourist-centric Nassau, lies the sleepy island of San Salvador. Twelve miles long and five miles wide, she is the tip of an underwater mountain rising from 5,000 metres below (15,000 feet) surrounded by picture-postcard, crystal-clear, blue seas.
Many people are scared witless by sharks, but I love them. I scuba dive and freedive with them whenever I can.
First described in 1837 by the German naturalist Eduard Rüppell, the great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) is the largest of the hammerhead shark family and can reach a length of over 6m (20ft), although some specimens have been seen to be much larger than this. However, with overfishing, the great hammerhead is usually observed to be much smaller than this.
I felt apprehensive heading out to Tiger Beach where I was supposed to enter open water in the presence of some big, wild apex predators, without any protection other than holding up my camera as a shield in case I was singled out as a snack.
"We found that newborn sharks captured in the mid-1990s left the safety of the islands when they were between five and eight years old," explained Dr Kevin Feldheim, the A. Watson Armour III Manager of the Pritzker Laboratory for Molecular Systematics and Evolution at The Field Museum and the lead author of the study.
Yet, despite leaving and visiting many other islands in their travels, these sharks 'remember' where they were born after a decade of roving, and are able to find the island again when they are pregnant and ready to give birth," Dr Feldheim added.
Jim Abernethy, owner and operator of Scuba Adventures, was the dive operator who showed all of the others that sharks are peaceful animals who want nothing to do with humans as a food source.
He spends most of his time with wild sharks during dives from his liveaboard ship, The Shear Water, at remote sites in the vicinity of the Bahamas, and is on land for only about 40 days a year.
Beaked whale species are thought to be sensitive to noise arising from certain human activities; in 2000, beaked whale strandings were observed coinciding with naval sonar exercises in the Bahamas.
Understanding the distribution and behavior of these species is important to minimize harmful impacts from human uses of the ocean.
A research team from Duke University, Woods Hole, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center listened for foraging beaked whales and measured ocean features and distributions of prey off the eastern coast of Andross Island in the Bahamas.
Just their name, their size, and their menacing looks can evoke feelings of terror, fear and instinctive rejection. However, if you have the privilege to be able to dive with big tiger sharks, as I have, you might fall in love with them, at least you will bond with them in a mysterious way.
