Holy [bleep] that was scary!

[teknitroxdiver]

Last week I got to make 4 dives off Cat Island, Bahamas. On the second dive, we were on a site which has lots of tunnels through the coral heads...kind of a coral cavern dive. Also, at the sites there are baitfish that are not afraid of divers in the least bit. You can swim into them and they simply mold around you. Very irritating, as you can't see ANYTHING but the fish in front of you.

Which brings us to the scary part. 5' reef shark, minus it's dorsal fin (weird, huh?). Comes over the top of my buddy, swims right up to the back of my head (we're talking inches here), starts twitching and thrashing, does a 180 and swims back toward my buddy while opening and closing it's mouth and doing that thing where the upper jaw hyperextends out. Almost swims right into said buddy, then pulls up and grazes over buddie's head. Then proceeds to twitch and spasm it's way under a coral head next to a rock where it finally calms down.

And I didn't know anything other than 'hey, theres a shark missing it's dorsal fin under that coral head. Neat!' until after the dive, as I was partially in said cloud of baitfish, and had my back to the whole thing.

 

[Wayward Son]

Sounds like you may have infringed on his territory.

 

[teknitroxdiver]

Most likely, I imagine.

 

[Mike Veitch]

Yer buddy get a photo??

 

[teknitroxdiver]

No, I was the one with the camera. (Who's stupid idiotic ripoff priced recharge batteries were DEAD after not 20 minutes in the water. AAARGGGHHH)

 

[sharky60]

This twitching and trashing behavior sounds like what some sharks do when they are showing aggression.
because it went back to it's den after it's 'strafing run' almost makes me think it was sleeping or feeding and somehow got startled by you guys showing up and came out to see what was there and once it figured out you were bigger and no real threat went back home.

could you tell if the dorsal had been bitten or cut off or if it looked like a birth defect of somekind? There are also some species of sharks with very small dorsals, although I think most of them are deep water sharks.