Spinners & Bulls are the ones I see most often within 10 miles of BHB
Palm Beach Dive Thread
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Spinners & Bulls are the ones I see most often within 10 miles of BHB
tekkydiver
Contributor
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Sandbar
OP
Glad to see it’s not just me that has a hard time IDing sharks!
Nurse & Lemons are pretty obvious. I assume tigers, hammerhead & GWS would be too if I ever saw one, which I unfortunately have not. But reef, bull, spinner, sandbar, and dusky can all look so similar!
Nurse & Lemons are pretty obvious. I assume tigers, hammerhead & GWS would be too if I ever saw one, which I unfortunately have not. But reef, bull, spinner, sandbar, and dusky can all look so similar!
OP
Using the very helpful links @PBcatfish shared, I believe videos 1 & 3 are spinners and video 2 is a bull.
Belzelbub
Contributor
Agreed on most of those, but bull and sandbar stand out a bit. A smaller bull is easily confused, but full size bulls are broader and bulkier.
Sandbars do look like the others except for the dorsal and pectoral fins. They are ridiculously large compared to the body. That's always been a giveaway for me.
johndiver999
Contributor
75 ft vis in 100 today with moderate or strong current
I rewatched video 2, you're probably right. Funny how it was creeping up behind those divers. Too bad you cut the video, it would have been funny to see their reactions if they suddenly noticed a bull 10 ft behind them haha.
Remember that one dive we did where a small reef shark kept circling around and coming up behind us? That thing scared the crap out of me the first time, it was so dang close.
Belzelbub
Contributor
HalcyonDaze
Contributor
No, that was a Caribbean reef shark as well. Bulls are pretty easy to ID; between the bulk and the swimming style they look like weightlifters strutting out of the gym.
Bull sharks in foreground and background; Caribbean reef shark second one from front with tail pointed towards camera.
Bull shark.
Carcharhinids in general are the "generic gray 4-door sedan" line of sharks; you've really got to see them all in person. We had a long-running debate on which deep ledge summer sharks were silkys versus duskys; I really only got that down when actually seeing them next to each other.
OP
I disagree. Even the guides that dive all the time agreed the shark in my video #2 was a bull. To me, it looks exactly like the photos you shared of bulls. It even acted completely differently than the other sharks.
Let's just say we agree on one thing. They are all sharks.
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