Wetpixel Bahamas Shark Trip
April 11th, 2005 by James
Last week was the Wetpixel Bahamas Shark trip with Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures. This was my first dedicated shark diving and photography trip and it was the most incredible diving experience I’ve had so far.
I arrived on Friday, three days before the trip, so that I could get in some local diving and practice with my Canon 1DmkII system. I did 4 dives with Eric as my buddy - one at Bath and Tennis, one at Breakers, one at Shark Canyon, and the last at the Wreck Corridor. A few people from the Wetpixel trip also showed up early(Marty and Jurg) so we were able to get a good group together.
Here are a few of my favorite photos:
A goliath grouper, a pair of spawning hamlets, and a southern stingray.
Eric and I, Marty Photographs a green turtle, Jurg photographs butterflyfish
Full West Palm Beach Diving Gallery
After a great weekend of local diving we boarded the Shear Water and headed to the Bahamas. Continue reading for shark photos.
The first few days of the trip, winds were high and the visability was low. We made the best of it by wrangling tiger sharks and getting some great topsides photos. There was another liveaboard dive boat in the area and they stayed at the dock while conditions were bad. Jimmy kept joking about them during the trip saying that they have to go to land every day, because their captain’s dog only takes a cr*p on land. Whenever conditions weren’t that good for diving, Jimmy would joke, “You guys want to go to the dock and watch the dog take a cra*p?” 
Here is a selection of my favorite photos from the shark wrangling portion of the trip. We took these at the beginning and the end of our week, and photos are either from the swim step with housing in the water, or topside, using a telephoto lens.
Tiger sharks charge the wrangling bait-line. Jim Abernethy works his pole-cam.
Bahamas Shark Wrangling Gallery
I’m not going to explain everything about the shark diving. Eric has posted a comprehensive trip journal that you can read for a day-by-day breakdown of the dive sites and sharks that we photographed. Instead, I’ll focus on what I learned.
Tiger and Lemon sharks at “Tiger Beach”
First, I found that tiger sharks are much more shy than I was expecting. Some of the “regular” sharks are what the crew calls “players” - meaning that they aren’t afraid of the divers - but most were just barely curious enough to come investigate the fish smell. They would come up the current line, swim over to each diver to investigate, then move toward the bait crate. They did this again and again, but it never felt threatening. Secondly, I learned a lot about how to photograph sharks. We photographed sharks on white sand, in blue water, and in bad visability. Eric gave us a great seminar at the beginning of the trip that got things started right. Even with all the different and challenging conditions, I am VERY happy with my photos.
Caribbean Reef Sharks at El Dorado
Thirdly, I learned that I was a lot happier with the RAW converter in Capture One. It’s lightyears ahead of Adobe Photoshop when it comes to speed of workflow, but I also liked the blues better and felt I got better contrast and punch out of my photos, while still using the same exposure and white balance adjustments I used to use in Photoshop.
Posted in Dives, Gallery, General |
