January's Best Underwater Moment
Five. Bull. Sharks. Circling!
Here's the scene: we have a full boat of open water students. Luckily, I was joining the trip as the underwater photographer. I roll into the water with my big camera rig and five students for their 2nd dive... ever! Before I can even equalize for the first time, the instructor is signaling "SHARK!" from below. I look around, and don't see anything.
On the descent, I set up my camera, and when I look up from the bottom, I am face-to-face with a huge, pregnant bull shark. Immediately, I start spamming the shutter button. Gracefully, she glides all of her 250lbs silently, just inches over the sand. She makes one full circle around our dive group before disappearing into the blue.
We all look at each other with eyes wider than our masks. That's when we see the second bull shark entering our area. Now, we have two sharks swimming just a few meters in front of us. The dive instructors gathered all of the divers into a tight circle with everyone facing outward, and we watched as more sharks entered the area.
Before we know it, there are 5 individual sharks making circles around our group. We stayed and watched them for 15 minutes before deciding it was time to move on with our dive.
If you didn't know, bull sharks migrate to Playa del Carmen for pupping season - aka to give birth to the next generation of sharks.
Bull shark diving is very common in the PDC - but we usually only see them at Bull Shark Point, a dive site near where our chance encounter happened. What made this encounter so magical was that Bulls are pelagic sharks. This means they live in deep (relative to diving), open, blue water. Bull Shark Point dive site sits at 25 meters. With our open water students, we were diving at only 8 meters. This is incredibly shallow for the sharks.
This is one dive I - and the newly certified divers! - will not forget!
