Marine Dynamics Blog

Today offered some amazing shark activity at Dyer Island, the only downside today was the decrease in visibility from yesterday. This was attributed to the presence of large phytoplankton blooms in the water; these blooms are a vital part of the marine food web. However it has a negative impact on our visibility in the water, but luckily no impact on the shark activity! We had an interesting sighting of a shark covered extensively in parasites. Even though these animals often have internal and external parasites, this particular shark was riddled with them. “Zane” made a very abrupt pass and disappeared into the depths and left room for other sharks to make their passes. See you tomorrow...

Those subantarctic skuas have been adopted by Marine Dynamics it would seem, because they are waiting for us every morning. They are a real pleasure to watch in the way that they escort us out of the harbour! We had some great sharks today, west of Dyer Island, with two of them being larger than 4 meters. Each cage had several close passes and there were several opportunities for photos from the deck. We even had some guests all the way from Jamaica to come and visit us and no they did not bring any brownies on board, I think :)! A real nice day it turned out to be...

It was once again the Subantarctic Skuas duty to escort us out to our dive site, however today he really came very close! We were kept waiting a bit today but the end result was worth it! We had several large sharks make their passes by the cage and there was even a large 4 meter female coming very close. She seemed intoxicated in the way that she just floated pass the front of the cage, an amazing shark she was! “Slash Fin” made another short and dramatic appearance for the clients and impressed them with his 4.7 meter body! It just started to rain so our trip was timed perfectly, great stuff team...

The subantarctic skuas got our clients filling up half their memory cards even before we saw any sharks. These birds are always awesome in the way that they fly so close to you, that you could almost touch them. Conditions at sea were very pleasant with relatively calm conditions. The sharks were slightly less calm in the manner they pursued the decoy today. Quite understandable because of the sheer number of sharks around the cage! Even though there were so many sharks, we were very surprised to see a young seal brave the waters in search of a play mate. He can consider himself very fortunate that the sharks preferred our seal decoy over the real thing :)! A Cape Gannet was also very lucky to have caught a massive fish in front of the boat, it was unlucky in the fact that it was too big to swallow :)! The day was truly blessed with an abundance of shark activity as well as a flurry of nature’s splendour! Keep it up...