Broadreach Fiji Shark Studies — SS11 Update: Saturday, June 28, 2014 “Saturday Night Babs”
Today’s update from Fiji:
Today, we got up to an early start and after a nutritious breakfast of cereal and toast, we’re ready for another exciting day of shark dives! We dove down onto the reef and were greeted by 35 more bull sharks, eagerly waiting to be fed. Once we were kneeling behind the coral wall and the feeding frenzy started, we saw a huge Tawny Nurse shark! After 15 minutes at 95 feet where the Bull Sharks were being fed, the Fijian Dive masters banged on their tanks, signaling that move up to the shallower reef where there were Grey Reef Sharks, along with a flurry of other fish and lots of colorful coral. Every moment we got, everyone was digging in the sand, looking for shark teeth in the sea floor to bring home. 15 minutes later, we headed up to the shallow for the last feed of the dive. Despite the fact that there were about 15 whitetips reef sharks, fed by the one and only Papa, we were completely distracted by the gigantic Moray Eel, weaving in and out of Papa’s legs, begging for attention. We watched Papa pet the eel on the head and give him a treat before ascending back up to the surface. After a 45 minute surface interval with (of course) cookies and amazing tea, we squeezed back into our wetsuits and jumped back in the water for one more dive! On this dive, we stared as Bull sharks were hand-fed, just feet away from our faces! We were also excited to see a sea turtle, which seemed surprised to have found itself surrounded by Bull Sharks in a feeding frenzy!
After this dive, we headed home to shower, eat lunch, and have a lecture on Shark Biology. Today, we learned about how 400 million years of evolution made sharks the perfect predator and worked on journals. To finish up the day, everyone dressed up for a night out on the town (just kidding) and we went to dinner at a local resort where we could see the sunset on the ocean as we devoured fresh fish tacos and hamburgers and drank strawberry smoothies and pineapple juice. After dipping our feet in the ocean and feeling the sand between our toes, we headed home to fall asleep to a funny movie, excited for an extra hour of sleep tomorrow and a soft coral dive!