wrecks
Sharky Sunday: Ripley’s Aquarium
Back in March of this year (2015), I had the pleasure to dive at the Ripley’s Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
I was in town for the Carolina Recycling Association Conference for the week and having been diving as a volunteer at the aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores, NC, I decided to give the Myrtle Beach aquarium a ring and see if they had any diving opportunities and they were very accommodating.
The staff were super friendly and the sea creatures were amazing. Here is a video of my dive:
Sharky Sunday: Diving at Shark Canyon
Here is a video of my dive at Shark Canyon in October 2014:
Reef Sharks, Hawksbill Sea Turtles, and Eels – Oh my…
UnderwaterObsessed: Diving the Mc Allister Wreck
Diving off Fort Lauderdale at the Donald McAllister Wreck in October 2014
Sharky Sunday out at the Caribsea
The wreck of the Caribsea has to be one of my favorite places to dive mostly due to the large community of sand tiger sharks. These magnificent creatures don’t mind sharing their home with a few divers and I adore spending time with them.
Sand tiger sharks will occasionally come to the surface and gulp air. I’ve mostly witnessed this while volunteering at the Pine Knoll Shores aquarium and it’s pretty cool. As it turns out, they store air in their stomachs and this plays a role in how they can float nearly motionless in the water while staying fairly close to the bottom. Divers would call this good buoyancy and others might just say it is a good trait since they appear to be very lazy. It might also be a pretty sneaky way to wait for prey.
The sand tiger shark is listed as “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Specifies and is also a candidate species for the U.S. Endangered Species list. This is due to a couple of reasons, in some parts of the world, these sharks are in serious decline due to over-fishing, the shark fin industry, and commercial fishing methods, and also they have one of the lowest reproductive rates of all sharks (according to http://www.auduboninstitute.org), but here in North Carolina we have what seems to be a really strong population that is thriving.
Here is a short video of my dive this past SharkySunday:
Want to learn more about these super rad dudes in grey? I encourage you to take the PADI Project AWARE Shark Conservation class at Olympus Dive Center and then book a charter for some shark diving or head on out to the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores for an up-close and personal (from behind the glass) view.
Coastinista 