DavidPT40
Contributor
I was thinking about some of my favorite dives earlier, trying to decide what made them so enjoyable for me. Yeah, diving in the Caribbean is nice. Most everyone likes seeing colorful fish and coral up close.
But for me, what do I like to see? Easy. I like to see fish eating other fish. A little gruesome maybe, but interesting.
One of the dives I really enjoyed was a shore dive near Panama City, FL. I was about 50 feet offshore, when I spotted a long stream of tiny baitfish. These fish were extremely small, less than two inches long. They were traveling very slow, and I couldn't see the beginning nor the end of the stream. So I dove with them for a minutes, thinking "Wow, this is pretty serene. Nature is so peaceful." Then I started catching glimpses of much longer fish, bonefish. At first they stayed on the periphery, swimming parallel to the baitfish stream. Then they would make break-turns and zoom through the baitfish formation, swallowing whole as many of the tiny fish as they could. This reminded me immensley of World War II bomber formations being attacked by fighters (interesting how war mimics nature eh?).
But these little fish weren't to recieve a reprieve today. The bonefish, now joined by other species, coralled the baitfish even closer to shore into very shallow water. From this vantage, the predators began attacking from below, breaking through the surface of the water as they gulped the baitfish down, sending them straight to their stomachs to be dissolved by acid alive.
At this point, it was about 6:00 in the evening, and the feeding frenzy was causing a big commotion. People on the shore were watching and staring, swimmers were getting out of the water. I thought to myself "Even though this is intensely interesting, its getting dusk, there is blood and fish oil in the water, all kinds of low frequency vibrations, and this place is (bull) shark city, maybe I better get out of the water". And thats what I did. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. So I watched the spectacle from the shore.
Anyways, that was one of my best dives.
But for me, what do I like to see? Easy. I like to see fish eating other fish. A little gruesome maybe, but interesting.
One of the dives I really enjoyed was a shore dive near Panama City, FL. I was about 50 feet offshore, when I spotted a long stream of tiny baitfish. These fish were extremely small, less than two inches long. They were traveling very slow, and I couldn't see the beginning nor the end of the stream. So I dove with them for a minutes, thinking "Wow, this is pretty serene. Nature is so peaceful." Then I started catching glimpses of much longer fish, bonefish. At first they stayed on the periphery, swimming parallel to the baitfish stream. Then they would make break-turns and zoom through the baitfish formation, swallowing whole as many of the tiny fish as they could. This reminded me immensley of World War II bomber formations being attacked by fighters (interesting how war mimics nature eh?).
But these little fish weren't to recieve a reprieve today. The bonefish, now joined by other species, coralled the baitfish even closer to shore into very shallow water. From this vantage, the predators began attacking from below, breaking through the surface of the water as they gulped the baitfish down, sending them straight to their stomachs to be dissolved by acid alive.
At this point, it was about 6:00 in the evening, and the feeding frenzy was causing a big commotion. People on the shore were watching and staring, swimmers were getting out of the water. I thought to myself "Even though this is intensely interesting, its getting dusk, there is blood and fish oil in the water, all kinds of low frequency vibrations, and this place is (bull) shark city, maybe I better get out of the water". And thats what I did. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. So I watched the spectacle from the shore.
Anyways, that was one of my best dives.
