Hey Everyone,
Ok, so great day meeting all the people I’ll be working and studying with from Oct to Dec this year in Hawaii.
Next couple of days I will spend more time looking over facilities and such but today was a get to know each other so we went snorkeling. Well, I didn’t bring any of my own equipment other than my dive computer and watch. I’ll have it all with me in October. But that meant I didn’t have my personal good cameras. We didn’t really expect to need cameras anyway just hanging out. So all we had were a couple of old little Olympus’. About 2 hours after we got to our location off the North Shore, it has some of the best diving and snorkeling as well as surfing.
We were in about 60 feet of water so we were staying in the upper range hanging with the free swimmers. That’s always fun because you actually get some pretty large ones coming around to check out the weird new fish with long skinny fins (humans) they hadn’t seen before. LOL
In 60 feet you have approx 4 layers of life. Floor & 3 about every 20 feet. The top range is really just curious swimmers coming up to see what’s moving around. Those are usually the biggest ones because they never know if could be food too. The fun part is you usually can’t see the bottom. LOL
We noticed a lot of the regular fish were leaving. That could only mean one thing. We had friends approaching. Most of the sharks around Hawaii are relatively harmless to people unless provoked and a couple of the species are just bottom feeders so we really weren’t worried. I grabbed a camera and went in, and realized just how many friends had stopped by to say hi. A LOT! LOL.
Mostly Whitetips and Sand Bars, there was a Scalloped Hammerhead I was trying to catch but just couldn’t. He was camera shy, plus you can see that some of my friends were not really big on personal space so I had to keep moving. LOL They were curious, but not as curious as the ones off the coast of San Diego or La Jolla, I’ve had small 3 & 4 foot young great whites bump into me there because they were so curious. Today they just wanted to hang out, and smile for the camera, and after about 45 minutes, they all just left. I was kind of hoping it was because a bigger badder one had swum into the area, but nope. The fish all returned super-fast and that was it. They were just curious and checking us out. Which isn’t unusual there. There are a few shark tours in that area so they are kind ofuse to the boats, but having a few people in the water with them actively hanging out with them was new for them. LOL All in all though we got along well. Can’t wait to get back out with my actual dive gear and go deeper and see who is hanging out.
So all in all a GREAT Day!
