A couple of days ago I made a dive with 10 big Bull sharks in Playa del Carmen. An absolute Epic dive I would like to share with you.
Straight off the beach of Playa del Carmen, there are Bull sharks. They are pregnant females, and are here from November to March, and then move south to give birth.
The dive was set up as a baited shark dive, this means that you attract the shark with dead fish. They will eat these dead fish, but it is important to note that this is only a fraction of what they consume in a day.
The advantage of this method is that you get a very intimate and close up experience with the sharks.
The disadvantage is that you impact their natural behaviour even if it is ever so slightly.
It is therefore that baited dives are controversial.
Our shark whisperer Octavio, tells us about his reasoning:
Sharks are an endangered fish, they are fished by man for their fins. These are very valuable in the asian market, where they are used in shark fin soup and potions of various kinds.
If continued to be fished in the quantities as they are, we will end up without sharks in the future. This is very problematic as they keep the reef fish population in balance, without them the reef eco system will become unbalanced and eventually it dies off.
The baited shark dives turn the sharks into something more valuable than their fins, they are now a tourism attraction. Dive shops in the area have come together to raise money (part of your dive fee) to pay off the fishermen in the area from fishing them.
Saving the sharks and thereby turning the disadvantage of baiting into a lesser evil.
Another goal is to change the gloomy perception they have in the general public, by showing that you can have safe interactions with sharks, changing the harts and minds of the divers, one dive at the time.
About our dive
We dive in a group of 4 divers plus one guide, then Octavia who is feeding the sharks, and a safety divers that is looking out for Octavio.
The other guided divers do this for the first time and are a little bit nervous as in what to expect.
There is a feeding station set up, when we arrive Octavio and his safety diver descends first then we roll backwards from the boat and swim quickly to the rope floating on the surface. The current is strong and we are waving like flags onto the line. We then use the line to descent and follow it along the bottom to the feeding area. Here we line up next to each other, lying onto our stomachs.
In front of us Octavio is standing into the sand, dressed in a “steel suit” it looks like a chain mail suit, something soldiers whore in the middle ages. In his hand he has a box which contains dead fish. It does not only attract the sharks but also a ball of smaller fish.
Behind him stands his safety diver, also dressed in the same suit but also with a big aluminium stick. He looks completely surrealistic, a combination of the middle ages and a space man that blows bubbles, guarding the galaxy with his magic wand. Anyways his job is to keep the sharks from approaching Octavio in his blind spots.
When we are all in place the sharks are already there, but now Octavio starts to feed them the fish, one at the time, directing them to swim in our direction like an underwater matador.
The 2,5 meter bull sharks swim in front, above and next to us. There are about 10 in total and they are in all directions wherever you look. They get so close you can count their teeth.
Eventually Lorenza shows up, a 3 meter pregnant Female, clearly a size larger than the rest, here Octavio makes sure we get a good look by directing her to pas in front of us.
After about 25 min we start to run short on bottom time, since we are at a depth of 25 meters. Octavio stops with feeding and sends the box with fish to the surface with his SMB, to not tempt the sharks anymore.
We now swim as a group shallower to about 18 meters where we start our ascent. The sharks follow us along and swim around and below us, although on a greater distance than earlier, on our safety stop they are only shadows in the deep.
We surface, clim aboard, and everybody is ecstatic and smiles are shared all around! An experience of a lifetime!
Below I made a short movie to give an impression
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