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holy cow. where's that serreche? i could be waaaaay off here, but i'm guessing south africa, in a cage. that place has a terrifying amount of sharks.

 

one of my mates is a professional diver. he had one of the gnarliest jobs in the world, yet he is completely mellow and nonchalant about it all. in fact he's stopped doing it because he didn't like hanging out with macho dudes who enjoyed killing sharks. anyway.... he used to go out on a boat, 400km staight south from south australia towards antartica. they would net a big school of tuna and then spend a month towing them all back to shore. i think they'd breed them for slaughter or something like that. it's (apparently) a very lucrative business, with a big catch worth up to $2m.

rob's job was to make sure no sharks ate the tuna. whenever a few chomped fish bodies would start floating to the surface, it meant that sharks had gotten through the net. he had to swim around with an explosive harpoon, kill the offending sharks (usually white pointers or makos) then sew the net back together. he has some pretty amazing photos, they're national geographic quality.

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not a shark. and no lasers. which is lucky for me

 

760855950_b74887b5d9.jpg

 

even though is was a playful as a dog, it had some big teeth, just in case it decided it didn't like me

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Spook, Bushpig, that was in Tahiti just outside the Bora Bora atoll. Those on the pictures (actually stills from my video camera) are Grey Reef Sharks (sorry not sure what they call them down under as I know they have different names there. Maybe bronze whaler or something like that). At that spot there were also some white-tip reef sharks and and some black-tip reef sharks. No cage involved. So many funny annecdotes with those shark dives. One of them is that the water was swarming with those litlle guys, and I had to be careful jumping off the boat as I did not want to land on the back of one of them and piss them off. While we stayed there I would dive in the morning and windsurf in the afternoon. Knowing what was in the water my windsurfing really improved a lot while I was there. ;-)

 

Spook, would be great to see pics from your mate. Yes, nowadays more and more tunas are actually bread in giant offshore nets. There are a lot of them in the med as well. Japanese refrigerating ships show-up, pass their order, then divers go in with explosive charges into the pens kill the tunas who are then loaded onto the ship, frozen and shipped back to Japan. Once in a while sharks get in and wreck havoc so divers have to be sent in and either whack them with explosive charges or show them a way out of the net.

 

Fishing used to be a lot more peaceful in the old days...

 

Can that lasered shark perform eye surgery? it looks pretty skinny.

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when i was a kid we went to bonaire one winter, and i made friends with one of the waitresses at the restaurant. every morning she would give me 3 or 4 loaves of stale bread and i would jump in the water with my snorkelling gear...it was awesome! i'd be completely surrounded by parrot fish, seargent majors, needle fish, and a bunch of others i forget the names of. right off the beach there was a drop-off too, where if you dove down deep enough, 12-15 feet, you could see blowfish, angelfish, and once, scarily enough, a barracuda! i love snorkelling.

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do barracuda attack people?

 

Serreche, they look bronze-whaler-ish, but did they have the bronze/gold colour? Whatever, that would be freaky diving with them. Bronze whalers have a bit of a reputation as being a bit prone to biting people. There have been a few cases of them attacking/biting people in the Swan river in Perth.

 

Spook, where is that? Those fellas can get quite aggressive. I remember one at Jurien Bay chomping a small dog that jumped off the pier into the water...

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I'm an open water certified diver, but i'm not really into it anymore. I have all the snorkeling kit and prefer that...much easier to manage and much less risk.

 

Be careful with the peas, you don't want the fish swiming up your trunks and mistaking something else for peas!

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carnac island bushy. on the beach there were a bunch of big fat seal lions rolling around. what a sweet life. eat fish, sunbake all day and then get it on during mating season.

those little seals were super playful, although i have had some fire up at me before while surfing. if there's baby seals around, the mothers can get pretty aggro.

on that day the seals were happy to play around. very fun, but i was cautious about getting any closer.

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I'm not really keen on the larger seals. Had one hassling us one surf and wasn't being very friendly! Surfed with a few baby seals once over at the Yorke Peninsular. Little buggers kept jumping out in front of us and sometimes over us!

If you want to meet a psyco fish go to lakeys in Sumbawa and at low tide paddle from the right side of the reef (facing the beach) to the shore. Watch out for the psyco trigger fish, about 50cm's and likes chunks of flesh and surfboards!

 

I spin out watching those shark docos of divers with no cages around great whites. It's only a matter of time before someone gets chomped and we'll be able to watch it on video!

 

I've dived round indo between swells and with heaps of white tips which are pretty lame and those feasty black tips, they're abit un predictable..

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Barracudas do attack on occasion but it is rare. They are often attracted to shiny things underwater such as jewelry and can bite by mistake. Any wild animal has the potential to inflict great pain/damage (RIP S Irwin), even the ones we tend to think of as cuddly, and should be treated with the utmost caution/repect. I am not that surprized by the dog being munched by seals although a bit of a freaky story. By the way guys, if you're in the water and there are seals swimming around you, then there is a good chance that there are some big fellas out there. I do not think I would swim/surf there. Be especially worried if all of the sudden for some unknown reason all the seals disappear from around you, then may be time to tuck those legs back on the board and head back to shore.

 

Trigger fish have the worst temper during nesting season, and some very large teeth to back it up. While diving I have had one munch on one of my fins before. I've also seen a guy stick his head under a rock to see what was there and end up being head-butted full-on by a trigger fish. Was pretty funny to see the guy's shocked reaction. They are fairly aggro but never heard of a serious injury being inflicted by one.

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lol.gif

 

Actually I have been reading a bit about triggerfish recently. Seem like cranky little buggers. BPG and me are going to the Maldives next year and have been hearing stories of the buggers.

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Serre Che, While I'm not such a fan of seals they don't bother me if they're not too close, it's only when you see half a seal pup floating near you that you start to worry. As far as surfing near them, in some places back home we have NO choice as there are so many. One big shark restaurant!

 

Our cyco trigger fish was a different color, red/pink and yellow spots on the ack. It was a jammy bastard too, no one could ever get it with a spear! It was meant to terrorize!

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yep. seals are like popcorn chicken for sharks.

we surfed a spot in south africa called mossel bay. it's a freighting right hander, just a drop then a full on pit. some blokes told us about it so we drove a couple of hours down the coast to check it out. we got there at night and as we checked in to a hotel, the kind lady at reception asked us if we were there for the shark diving. all of us become more than a little alarmed. she then gave us some brochures which pointed out that the diving takes place in a bay about 5km from where we wanted to surf, and that it boasted a 85% success rate of seeing a 5m+ beast. hmmmmmm.

in the morning we check the surf and it got even worse. a pack of about 40 seals was hanging out on the washy end section of the wave, near a clump of boulders right next to the rocky shoreline - ie the only safe haven for them in this entire bay.

the waves were soooooo unbvelievably good that we went out anyway, and had a couple of smoking surfs. but yeah, surfing in close proximity to a chumming operation and next to a pack of seals.... its not something i'd want to repeat again. it was next to impossible to relax and enjoy it.

there's epic waves in south africa, but the noah situation there is gnarly. a few days later i was the last one out at still bay (another long, very lonely right point) when a massive white pointer surfaced about 60m from me. it's back was seriously the size of a small hatchback. i somehow snaffled a wave in and crawled up the sharp rocks with no regard for my board or my feet. i didn't stop shaking for about an hour afterwards. plus, it's reassuring to think that if it had wanted to nail me, i wouldn't even have seen it.

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 Originally Posted By: Bushpig
lol.gif

Actually I have been reading a bit about triggerfish recently. Seem like cranky little buggers. BPG and me are going to the Maldives next year and have been hearing stories of the buggers.


Yea, be careful - the tend to go at you in the "Richard Johnson" if you know what I mean. Their territory goes up and out like a cone shape, so if they give chase swim down and away....
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