 |
This picture of the thresher shark was taken by my buddy Joakim Rastberg see his web page. |
On my trip to the Red Sea I had hoped to see one new species of sharks Silvertip shark (Carcharhinus albimarginatus), it is supposedly not that rare and I was hoping to see it, unfortunately I did not but I saw something much rarer that I had never dreamt of seeing, a Thresher shark.
Me and my buddy was doing a dive on Daeldalus, all other divers was dropped on the wall but we decided that we had done enough wall diving and where happy to see a sand bottom so we dove right from the boat. The sand bottom was quite deep though, it started at 20-25 meters (60-80 feet) and this was the last dive for the day so we did not swim out to the drop off, we stayed just where the sand bottom started and climbed up on the wall as the dive progressed. After turning around after half the dive we where slowly swimming towards the boat and where at about 8 meters (25 feet) I looked out into the blue water over my left shoulder and I see a Thresher shark!!!! It is quite close, maybe 3-4 meters away only, swimming passed me fast to check us out, my buddy is in front of me and the shark a little bit deeper. I start swimming like crazy to keep up, I swim passed my buddy and hit him quite hard to get his attention but continue to swim. After about 30 meters sprinting the shark turns out to the left and disappears into the blue. It was probably a pelagic Thresher shark, it was about 3-4 meters long (9-12 feet).
After sprinting like that and seeing such a rare shark, I take a break wait for my buddy to catch up and contemplate how beautiful the shark really where. My buddy on the other hand thinks that the shark might come back, so he turns around and starts to watch and he is right it comes for another pass. He waits and waits until the shark fills the whole frame of his camera and snaps one shot, he said that he was surprised that the shark was so big when he saw it in the flash light.
|
This picture of the thresher shark was taken by my buddy Joakim Rastberg see his web page. |
I saw the shark also but again it disappears out into the blue very fast.
After this we both looked over our shoulder more than looking forward for the rest of the dive but no more luck.
If I try to compare this shark encounter with other sharks that I have seen, the biggest difference is that I think this shark swam much faster?! It was definitely checking us out and was curious as many big sharks tend to be, although this came back and gave us yet another look which I do not think I have seen any other shark do, at least not that obviously, the same shark might come back after a few minutes when you are not sure if it is the same or not, but this one just turned around was out of sight maybe half a minute and then came back. Also for what I understand it likes to hunt over the sand bottom?? it was no where near the bottom, the bottom was at 20+ meters, we where at about 8 meters so my guess is that it detected us long before we saw it and came up from the bottom only to investigate us.
One more thing, of course it swam a bit different that 'normal' sharks, the tail is really long and it looks a bit like a snake swimming in the water, but I really did not have time to think about that, I was so surprised that I really did not think much at all, and the total time that I saw the shark was less than 1 minute.
Links about Thresher sharks:
© Stefan Sarin 2000, 2001, accessed