It’s Shark Week on Discovery this week.
Who has ever seen a shark or something else scary while out swimming?
Personally, I HATE seeing the bottom of the lake when I’m swimming. I think my first couple years in open water, I had my eyes closed for 80% of the time.
Don´t worry!
Unless a nuclear war starts, or more nuclear plants blow, or genetic engineers became more crazy, you never will be attacked by a shark in a lake.
Bull sharks can swim fresh water. Just saying.
But…in a lake? How the bull shark will reach the lake?
This fish is called a gar. They do live in the lake!
Hi Nick
Just kidding. I hope never see those fish…(better: i hope that those fish never see me)
Bull sharks in Florida are nasty… Swim in clear water and never swim in or near a shoal.
Via a river. Mississippi River has been known for a shark siting here and there.
I love shark week, but c’mon. I watched two episodes back to back and they basically said the exact opposite things about shark behaviour.
Granted, one was all about how sharks are misunderstood and beautiful creatures, while the other was using as much drama as possible to show that sharks are horrific killers…but still.
Back in '96 did a photo trip down to Revillagegedos Archipelago (pronounced revillagegedos). Find Cabo San Lucas on a map and look 250 miles south.
Great place to see pelagic creatures. Mantas, dolphins, large fish, etc. all gather there. The place get slammed by hurricanes quite often so not much for delicate corals and what not. Not a place for anything meek. Also home to worlds dumbest lobster.
We had been diving around the islands for about 14 days and had seen various species of sharks just about every dive (brown sharks, white tip and black tip reef sharks mostly) as well as mantas, and more mantas (I was having a hard time getting photos that didn’t contain mantas).
So we tried a spot known to be frequented by hammer heads. It was an under water ridge that sticks out from Socorro Island and is fairly deep, running from 60-100 ft on the ridge top. Either side of the ridge falls off into Blue. Current was ripping.
I had camera equipment which was useful for when the reef sharks would get too interested. I could just give them a little bump with the housing or strobe and they’d back off a bit. My wife wasn’t doing photos so she’d carry a hawaiian sling spear (with the sharp tip taken off) to poke 'em if needed.
So here we are down about 70 feet “hiding” from the current behind a large boulder waiting for hammer heads. A large school of tuna came through so I shot several frames of those. Then I did some diver shots with the wife modeling. I had 8 frames left and decided to just wait for some of those damn hammer heads.
Now my air getting to the point where it’s time to start making way to the surface. As we start our ascent, sure enough, here comes a school of hammer heads. These things are really timid and never got close enough for any good shots but I popped off the rest of my roll anyway.
This distracted us so now the current has taken us away from the boat (about 500 yards and counting). We didn’t really know how far until a few minutes later when we surfaced.
We had both gotten pretty saturated with nitrogen and were taking our time ascending. My wife uses a lot less air than I so she was coming up more conservatively. I made the decision to get up to 15 feet and just breath the tank down until I sucked in water and she’d decomp for a few extra minutes.
At this point we’re in blue water and my only reference points are my gauges and my wife. No bottom. Out of the blue to my right is what I first thought was a brown shark. As it get closer to my wife I realize it’s really fucking big. Picture an F-350 crew cab with a tail. This isn’t a brown shark. It’s a… no it can’t be… oh shit. Tiger shark. Really fucking big tiger shark. That unmistakable square head is swimming a direct line to my wife. I’m on the surface now, she’s at 20-25 feet.
She turns tits up and starts kicking away hard, looking down her noise at this… thing. I’m am silently screaming at her to stop kicking. I come to grips with the probability that it’s going to bite her. We are a 36 hour boat ride from a Mexican hospital.
It sort of noses her fins, once, twice. Ok, this is it. I’m thinking she’s done. I’m floating less than 10 yards away and there is nothing I can do. This animal doesn’t care, has no emotion, no self awareness. It’s only decision is food or not food. The only way it knows for sure is to taste.
Just then (she told me after) my wife realized trying to out swim a tiger shark isn’t going to work. So she stopped an presented her vertical body to the animal. She said she wasn’t going to let it eat her. She’s not going down without a fight.
The shark weaved slightly to the left, around my wife and into the blue void. A perfect creature in it’s own element. I started crying. She came up wide eyed and visibly shaking.
The captain of the boat picked us up in an inflatable and we told him what we saw (without saying a word).
He asks “What happened?” I shake my head.
“Did you see hammer heads” I nod.
“You saw something else.” I nod.
“Was it?..”
None of the other 8 people on the boat were told until we got back home.
http://www.goldcoastaustralia.com/gold-coast-shark-attacks.html
scroll down…I used to swim there when I lived on the Gold Coast…
Per a friend: “Don’t you think it is ironic that shark week is the same week as the US open?”
.
Had you just delivered the bomb? The Hiroshima bomb?
Just kidding, cool story.
Was on Singer Island for Spring Break. Was gonna do an OW swim in the ocean and was standing on the beach, looking around. About 200m offshore, a 3-4 ft Spinner shark broke the surface. OK…no swim that day.
Next day I was actually doing the swim. Stopped after a few hundred meters to orient myself after I got rolled by a big-ish wave. Looked over to my left and saw a 5-6 ft. Spinner shark break the surface about 50m away. OK then… time to walk back to my family!!
I know Spinner sharks are essentially harmless to humans, but rational thought doesn’t help much when thinking about sharks in the water with you.
Personally, I would love to one day do one of those cage dives w/ Great Whites…but Mrs. P13 won’t sign the permission slip. 
I swam open water in St. Thomas this summer while training for LP, on one of my swims I saw turtles, a couple of stingrays and a nurse shark feeding at the bottom. It kinda freaked me out at first but it could have cared less about me. Didn’t see one again for the rest of the time I was there but I was hoping to catch another glimpse. The closest we get to seeing sharks in RI is seeing striped bass or bluefish schools. However, there was a 12ft Great White swimming close to the swim start for the Prov 70.3 last year a few weeks before the race. They followed that thing like a hawk with helicopters and boats until is swam offshore quite a ways.
This story is from Monty in this thread:
It was 1985 at the Daytona beach triathlon. I was off the front in the swim by about 150 yds., and I kept getting hit on the feet by the swimmer behind me. I finally stopped to yell at the person, and no one was there. About 5 seconds later I got hit in the back with a heavy blow. I then realized that a shark was hitting me. My life did’nt flash before my eyes, but the fear of dying in the mouth of a shark petrefied me. I was still 500 yds from shore, and there was no lead boat or kayak. The shark came in for another attack, and I put my hands in front of me and got ready to punch it on the nose, and maybe gouge an eye if it took hold of me. At the last second it did a u-turn right in front of me, and that’s when I knew what I had to do. I turned around and swam back into the main pack behind me. I figured that I would at least give this sucker a choice. There were about 4 or 5 swimmers in that group and I tucked right in the middle. They were wondering what the hell I was doing. They soon found out. Mike Garcia was the next to get hit, and then Wendy Ingrahm. As we were running up the beach Mike looked at me with eyes as big as silver dollars and screamed at me that he just got attacked by a hammerhead. I said, I know, why do you think I was swimming backwards. It was very scary, and kind of weird running towards the bikes. I had just escaped with my life, and all thought of the race had left my mind. I know Mike was feeling the same way, but soon we just got on the bikes and started riding. Later we were to find out that a fisherman had shot a 8 foot hammmerhead 2 days before the race in that exact area. The shark was just being territorial, as hammerheads are. Good for us it was’nt dinner time…True story
It’s Shark Week on Discovery this week.
Who has ever seen a shark or something else scary while out swimming?
Personally, I HATE seeing the bottom of the lake when I’m swimming. I think my first couple years in open water, I had my eyes closed for 80% of the time.
It’s been shark week in Kona all month Nick.
let’s see, a 15 ft and an 18 ft Tiger shark patrolling shallow waters from Lymons (near the run turnaround on Ali`i Drive) up to the Ironman Buoy. and a couple of 16 Footers in Hapuna (the 70.3 swim location).
Haven’t run into them while swimming, but there are White Tip reef sharks near the 1 mile turn from the peir … little ones. And an occasional big one.
I just got back from Tahiti and the best part was swimming with the Sharks!
OK so they were only 6’ black tipped reef sharks (relatively harmless) but there was 50 of them circling us. Several bumped into me on their way to severl feeding frenzies. The guides were tossing huge chunks of fish at them (from the boat I might add!) Awesome beautiful animals. So lithe, efficient and lightening quick when they wanted to get somewhere.
While relatively harmless, we were repeatedly warned to NOT touch them as they could nip us out of surprise. All good.
The stingrays were about 2-1/2 feet across, super cute and super soft.
In uncontrolled situations I’ve never seen a shark while swimming however. I suspect that when I do, I will be sensibly nervous, but not freak out as it won’t be as surprising as it once was.
Back in '96 did a photo trip down to Revillagegedos Archipelago (pronounced revillagegedos)
Diving away from the boat in that particular place in the 90’s was a no-no Duffy.
There were some huge tiger sharks in that area in those years and tiger sharks are way more dangerous than any other shark. Unlike other sharks, they are not smart at all and will eat almost anything when hungry. That shark was probably not hungry at all. I think you two were very lucky.
One thing is encountering a shark in one of those popular ‘dive-with-the-sharks’ spots, and something else is encountering a huge tiger in the Revillagigedos. I am glad you both made it back in one piece. That sure must have been a very intense experience.
Sergio
That’s an amazing and terrifying story. You told it extremely well, and holy crap I’m glad your wife is alright.