Lemon Sharks of the shipwreck "Esso Bonaire III" with Emerald Charters

[soundfield]

Here is my latest eco-tourism shark diving video looking into the Lemon sharks found on the shipwreck "Esso Boniare III". Lemon sharks are an often overlooked shark species, and unjustly so. I found these sharks to be mild mannered and not camera shy. These large coastal sharks are becoming an eco-tourism attraction in the Jupiter / West Palm diving area. This dive was led by Randy Jordan, owner of Emerald charters. Diving with Randy/Emerald charters is not for everyone. These dives require advanced skills and you will be responsible to insure your own personal safety. No one will be asking to see how much air you have consumed, nor will anyone tell you to ascend to avoid deco. If you are an experienced/advanced diver that can take care of yourself around large sharks in deep (85-90ft) waters, than this dive will be an exciting experience. These shark dives involve chumming and hand feeding to attract various species of sharks and thus has risks associated with such controversial activity. As long as you know what your getting yourself into, this is an amazing opportunity to come face to face with large coastal sharks. Here is the short film, and thanks for watching!

 

[iamrushman]

enjoyed the video....thanks for sharing....great info.

 

[drrich2]

"These dives require advanced skills and you will be responsible to insure your own personal safety. No one will be asking to see how much air you have consumed, nor will anyone tell you to ascend to avoid deco. If you are an experienced/advanced diver that can take care of yourself around large sharks in deep (85-90ft) waters, than this dive will be an exciting experience."

My 1st post since the forum upgrade, and I don't see the usual Quote button, so I used quotation marks manually.

I've got a question. When I dove with Jupiter Dive Center, general procedure was the group quickly got off the boat (unanchored & unmoored, called a 'hot drop'), descended together, drift dove with a guide who carried the dive flag, and ascended roughly together. I dove the Zion wreck train (Zion, Ms. Jenny & Esso Bonaire) 3 times.

My question is about work flow. How does Randy's operation conduct the dive differently? (I'm not talking about using bait to get in sharks for close encounters; I'm talking about whether people go in as a group, whether it's a hot drop, whether the captain expects to pick them up together, what happens when one diver ascends well before the others, etc...).

Stands to reason if you want to watch Randy feed the sharks, you follow him so I guess it's a 'guided dive.'

Richard.

 

[soundfield]

Randy jumps in first and goes directly down; he does not wait for anyone at the surface before decent and he will tell you that. So if an inexperienced diver has issues (like equalizing/buoyancy), they will be on their own to get down to the wreck, and with current and (at times) limited visibility, a diver can swim off in the wrong direction. When a diver ascends before Randy, they will have to deploy their own surface sausage and wait for a pick up. The dive continues without interruption for the remaining divers. Some of the divers went into deco, myself included. Not a big deal if you know what your doing, but I could see where an newbie could run into problems. It's a fast paced, "better have you act together" kind of boat. Everyone on the boat that day was a dive master or above. The shop vets out inexperienced divers the best they can and it sounds like they do a pretty good job of that. In short, if you've only made a few warm water, shallow Caribbean reef type dives being baby sat by the dive master and then jump on this boat, you could be in for a big surprise. I felt safe on my two days of diving with Randy, but I'm glad I had hundreds of dives and 20+ years experience under my belt. I have read a few reports of divers being very unhappy with Randy, calling his operation downright dangerous; so my observations are not off the mark. Like I said, it's not for everybody, but for some it's the best and they love it! If you're a newly certified diver that likes to hold hands with your significant other while enjoying the view of an Angelfish swim by, you're on the wrong boat! I enjoyed my dives and I will be a return customer for sure. It's all about spearfishing and close shark encounters onboard the Emerald and some divers are turned off by both of those activities. Like I said, it's not for everyone. I loved it!

 

[dumpsterDiver]

So Randy and several of the customers are going into deco. Any divers who don't want to do deco or run too low on air, must ascend on their own through all those sharks.. Sounds stimulating.

I didn't see that the divers were wearing any type of redundancy which is typical for decompression divers. Is that just part of the adventure and excitement of the experience? The operation is advocating planned decompression dives with no redundancy?

 

[drrich2]

Thanks for the specifics; very useful. Thing is, there is a wide range of dive experience competency between 'fresh out of OW, just a few warm, shallow Caribbean reef dives with professional dive guides monitoring you' on the one hand, and 'everybody that day trip was dive master or above.'

I'm an intermediate diver, somewhere in that wide range between, and your input suggests to me the following points to ponder:

1.) Diving out of Jupiter tends to be drift diving, boats aren't moored or anchored so you've no line to get down or back up, and the boat drifts along following divers. Viz. tends to be fairly good, but not up there with Bonaire, Cozumel, etc...

2.) The guy you're there to watch draw in the sharks jumps in & does not wait for you. There are other divers who'll also need to get off the boat.

3.) When I was in Jupiter, seems like the typical dive briefing tended to include 'it's 90 feet to the sand.' So unless you want to hover well up in the water column, I'm guessing most of the divers are roughly at a similar depth to Randy and each other.

4.) Non-technically trained divers have often been taught strongly to avoid going into deco. If some of the divers ran into deco., I'm guessing it might be tricky to avoid if you want to go up at the end of the dive with the group, or at least Randy.

5.) I'm guessing you'd better plan on you, or you & your buddy, going up alone! Since it is drift diving, and the surface likely wavy, I wonder how often it takes awhile to get found?

Having dove Jupiter one trip with Jupiter Dive Center (which I really liked), then one trip out of Morehead City, NC (with Olympus Dive Center), to get a feel for being in the water with substantial numbers of fairly big (sand tiger) sharks (not fed or baited, just handing out), I've often mulled over the possibility of heading back down to Jupiter and diving with Randy. I've explored his website a number of times. While the site asks for 'good divers' (but look at the bottom of this page to see how that's described), I don't think the level of 'what to expect disclosure' quite rises to the level of the info. you provided.

Thanks for the video (nice looking, by the way), and especially your diving workflow description of how the trip ran. If I ever go on a trip where having to head up alone ahead of the group to avoid deco. on a drift dive with a moving boat is a common occurrence, I'd like to know in advance. And I don't mean finding out during the dive briefing!

Richard.

 

[soundfield]

We cleared deco durring acent without issues. This was also the case when I dove with Bullsharks in Playa, it's wasn't a problem. Randy told divers that if they felt more comfortable, that they could watch from the deck of the wreck further from the shark action and less depth. Some divers took that advice. Some divers where in fact deco equipped. We were also using a 38% air mix.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

We cleared deco durring acent without issues. This was also the case when I dove with Bullsharks in Playa, it's wasn't a problem. Randy told divers that if they felt more comfortable, that they could watch from the deck of the wreck further from the shark action and less depth. Some divers took that advice. Some divers where in fact deco equipped. We were also using a 38% air mix.

WOW it is different trying to get a quote....Saying that you, Randy and some others were able to ascend without being bent or running out of gas is great to hear, but planning deco dives with no redundancy does surprise me somewhat.

Are you advocating for this type of diving? I got banned from the board for several months because I talked about doing a no-deco dive, but failed to use a dive computer. This practice sounds more aggressive.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I'm generally for staying within no-deco limits on recreational dives; I figure no sense pushing things. Every now and again I'll go a bit past and my computer will call for a few minutes, but not more than my usual three-minute stop at 15 feet that I do on any dive over 30 feet.

On the Emerald dives, the usual spots in question are the Hole in the Wall followed by the Bonaire. On occasion we'll hit Lemon Drop #3, which is 100 ft to a low-relief reef. At the Hole in the Wall the max depth at the bottom of the ledge is 130-140, but in general Randy won't go that deep. Last time out I think my max depth was 116. Over the course of the drift the group will make a slow ascent; usually the best "action" is above 50 feet. The lighting for the photographers is better and by then the sharks are a bit less cautious. The Bonaire has the option of hanging high on the fantail at 70-75 feet, which is where you're instructed to wait until the everything is in order. I usually hang up there a bit longer to extend my bottom time and safety margin; I'll drop down to the sand at 90 when I figure things are as lively as they're going to get. Some folks will do things the other way around - go to the sand as soon as Randy says OK, then retreat up to the fantail once their time starts getting low. Once Randy calls for the ascent, it's a slow process again.

On the Emerald I had one dive in 2014 (it was a day when Randy wasn't on the boat and had someone filling in for him) where I racked up an 18-minute deco stop. This was back when my view was "the more gas, the better" and would rent out three 120-cf HP steel nitrox tanks (which at 10% overpressure probably had 132 cf of gas). As a result, on the third dive I was sitting on the fantail waiting for a tiger to show, got down to eight minutes of no-deco and 2500 psi of gas left in the tank, and decided to push down to the bottom and at least get some shots of the 3-4 lemon sharks we had. Wound up leaving the bottom with 2000 psi in the tank and did a very cautious ascent that probably took me 35 minutes; I got back on the boat with 1000+ psi in the tank. Since then I've been renting 100-cf tanks, which for the Bonaire dives is plenty of gas and doesn't tempt me into pushing the time limits.

As far as the sharks go if you get separated on the ascent, they tend to seek out the guy with the food. If you were doing some spearfishing on the side it might get lively, but I've had dead lionfish on me during an ascent and been totally ignored by the lemons. What you have to keep an eye out for are the "wallflowers" - sometimes the bigger customers will pass by the perimeter of the group to check things out. A few weeks ago on the Bonaire we were making our ascent from the second dive and I happened to see one of our tiger sharks about 20-30 feet away. She never came in for the bait and I only saw her for about 15 seconds; she swam by, saw the lemon shark party, and decided she wasn't in the mood for that kind of ruckus.