Mantas and sharks and cod, Oh my!

I haven't done much work on Voodoo this week, because I just got back from one of my best weeks ever at sea! Undersea was chartered by Richard Fitzpatrick, our friendly neighborhood filmmaker/shark researcher/crazy tiger shark man, for a Discovery Channel show for shark week! It's pretty huge...everyone who has a TV should check it out when it comes out, I suppose sometime later on this year. We had lots of very cool people on board, all of whom had great stories! I'm too exhausted now to add photos or write much more, but the basic gist of the week was that we caught and tagged 25 sharks (mostly grey reef whalers, but also several white tips and one silvertip!) and 3 potato cod, and put out 25 data loggers all around Osprey reef, which will record the presence of any of the sharks passing by. This way, we can see how far the sharks actually move. It's all very exciting, we can't wait to see the data!

But that's not all...I also had the best manta ray experience of my life! Jon and I went for a dive at Raging Horn to put down a crittercam. They sit on a coral outcrop at 30 metres, and record for up to 6 hours. We've seen all sorts of things on the camera - manta rays, lots of different kinds of sharks, and even a whale shark once! In any case, when we went down to deploy it, what should I see but four huge manta rays, just sitting in the current. Often they are a bit skittish of divers, and don't stick around much when there are bubbles, but these didn't budge. We watched them for about 20 minutes as they hovered and made passes over the reef. Incredible.

The weather was absolutely perfect for the week. So good that we were able to dive on Shark Reef, just south of Osprey. If there is any wind or swell, we don't go there, because the shallowest part of the reef is still 16 metres down, so there is no protection from wind or waves. But we were insanely lucky, and it was blowing less than 10 knots, so we headed down there to put in some data loggers. I got to go on a dive, and the visibility was unreal! Probably about 40 metres or more. Wow. We didn't see many sharks, though, even when we chummed up, trying to get some sharks to tag. A couple of silver tips, a couple of grey reefies, but not much else. I was hoping for some hammerheads, but no luck.

I was sad to come back to land, as usual, but it was SO great to get back out to sea, especially since it's been so long. Between Alaska, bad weather cancellations, Brazil, and refit, I hadn't been diving for 3 1/2 months! And what a way to be welcomed back to diving.