Winter Transients
By Jeffrey “Hammerhead” Philips
“Splendid savage of the sea” is how Jacques-Yves Cousteau described them. Splendid, yes; savage, no. I would say commanding or life giving. I am talking about sharks.
That is not how I thought of them back in the ’60s. After reading such books as Dangerous Marine Animals, Dangerous Sea Creatures, and the scariest one of all, The Sharks Around Us, then in the ’70s, the movie Jaws, I was petrified to enter the water. And I stayed in that horrified condition until the ’90s.
Diving in the ocean off Palm Beach, a shudder went through my body every time I saw one pass in the distance. But eventually I wanted to conquer that fear. Resting under a ledge on a site known as 4th Window, a nurse shark slept, its barbels ticking the sandy bottom. Letting the warm current push me toward him, I reached out to touch his long sweeping brown tail. His body bent and white eyes stared at me; not today pulsed in my brain.
But over the years and seeing sharks of different species on almost every dive, the fear diminished until I look forward to interacting with one. Even though they act like giant puppy dogs it does not mean you can forget that these are over 1,000-pound wild creatures and that an accidental bump can cause serious problems.
Palm Beach has two species of sharks that stay with us all year long, the easygoing nurse shark and the fast swimming Caribbean reef. As the air and water turn cooler, just as the people population increases, so do the members of the chondrichthyes class. The greatest number of inhabitants are the lemons, bulls, hammerheads, spinners and the tigers. In the deep waters past the ledges, great whites are known to cruise by.
The large, stout-bodied lemons get their name from the yellow brown color of their skin. They are considered harmless unless provoked and visit our sunken wrecks to mate.
The bull sharks are sometimes called the freight train because of their massive bulk and aggressiveness. They are usually seen alone on the deeper dive sites. At times they congregate in groups of five or six and are breathtaking as they power past you.
Hammerheads are the easiest to recognize with their unusual shaped head. This shark is sometimes seen in water depths of 60 feet cruising a foot or two above the sand looking for different rays to prey upon.
The spinners are the most fun to watch. They are most often seen by sunbathers and fisherman jumping out of the water and doing a spin in midair before splashing the surface.
Every now and then, the striped shark marches into our area. He has a wide mouth, broad nose, a barrel body and is known as the tiger shark. He is the only ovoviviparous requiem shark.
Contact Jeffrey Hammerhead Philips at Pura Vida Divers: HYPERLINK “http://www.puravidadivers.com” www.puravidadivers.com, 561-840-8750.