its a sunday and yes, its a working day.. meeting my Personal Advisor to give me some runs in the sims.. need to fix my cars.. my mustang 1st.. something broke in my alternator and FODed (foreign object debris) it up, making a sickening grinding sound when the engine runs.. still runs, but making a heck of a noise.. i'm sure its not good for my engine either. saturday was spent well.. met mike at 630 to pick up our tanks from mbt divers.. drove into base, with his boat in tow and launched.. headed 22 miles off shore to the Avocet.. its a 2,640 ton, 247-foot clam shell dredge built in 1943 is one of the largest wrecks in the area.. The top of the third deck wheelhouse rises 68 feet from a depth of 115 feet. The vessel was sunk as an artificial reef in May of 1991.. the visibility wasn't too good near the wreck but decent enough to dive on.. mike was spearfishing (for our dinner) and i was his spotter.. saw lots and lots of giant barracudas on the way down.. amberjacks were swimming around the wreck but they were too small to catch (36inches by law).. it was a deep dive.. we were at about 100ft (about 31m) for most of the time and only had 20 mins of no-deco time tops.. 31 mins bottom time was all we clock thanks to the depth.. came up empty handed.. chilled on the boat for abit before heading to our 2nd site the Navy barge.. it was sunk in 1993 as an artificial reef approximately 9 miles SSE of Pensacola Pass.. depth of about 90ft.. given our 1.5hr surface interval, we had a no-deco time of just over half an hour.. the moment we reached the wreck, mike poked at me and pointed into the blue.. he then raised his arm, flattened out his palm, pointed it vertically up and placed it on his forehead. shark. i peered over and spotted a 6 footer.. sharp snout, sandy in colour, big triangular dorsal fin.. sandbar shark.. we initially thought it was a bullshark (which wasn't uncommon in the area..) but its snout wasn't flat like a bull's so.. yeah.. a fully grown sandbar shark.. just when there's something great like this to see, i forget my camera.. left it in the car.. crap.. it swam away, into the blue.. we headed along the barge and came across an 'outcrop' formed by the stern of the barge and the sandy bottom.. mike spotted a large red snapper but couldn't take the shot as it was fast.. but managed to shoot a grouper.. seconds after the shot, as mike was pulling in the line, i tugged at his fins.. he looked back at me. i raised my flattened palm to my forehead and pointed behind him.. he turned and what he saw made him drop his line and back off.. the sandbar shark was just inches from us.. it then darted off once again, into the blue.. mike reeled the grouper in and we headed to the top of the stern.. he hooked our catch to an abandoned anchor to firstly, avoid contact with the shark's teeth and secondly, to free his hands to reset his speargun for another fish.. the shark appeared again, coming from a totally different directing.. it came near our catch and darted away again.. such a beautiful, magnificent animal.. my love for shark was always missing a link.. of being face to face and experiencing the water with them.. the only shark that i've seen prior to this was a tiny dogshark at the pulau aur house reef.. this sandbar shark was WAY bigger than that, interacting with us (or at least our catch).. this reinforces my passion for these majestic, powerful kings of the ocean.. the shark knew we were hunting and had a kill. it was swimming/circling us just beyond visual range and then coming in close to check as out time and again.. you feel so small, knowing that you are just a stitch in the fabric of life, just a speck in the natural world.. we were the only divers at the barge. we had the whole place to ourselves, just mike, me, and the shark.
we retrived our catch and headed back to the anchor we dropped.. mike was low on air and thus, we made our acsend, back to the boat where sean was watching the boat and enjoying the sun on the calm surface. on our way out, one of the remora which was shadowing the sandbar shark decided to mingle around us instead.. at 1st thought, 'if the remora is here, then the shark must be...' i glanced at mike. he had the grouper hooked onto this bc.. mike saw the remora as well and looked at me.. he had the exact same thought.. we scanned the blue beyond as we managed our controlled ascend and safety stop at 15ft.. the shark was no where in sight, much to our relief, and to me, a tinge of disappointment as well.. such a miracle of nature, top notch predator of the ocean.. designed perfectly for its purpose.. well.. at least we are having fish that night..
chiyu
