Kauai Photoblogging 6: Shark blogging

My wife called her sister on Sunday and my brother in law (I'll call him Brolaw from now on) told my wife it was a perfect day to take some pictures of sharks. Not only was it calm and sunny- his cousin had seen two sharks while spear fishing in a channel near Brolaw's house.

I loaded gear and kids into the car, dropped the family off at a keiki-beach (a beach that's safe for little kids) and followed Brolaw out into the water. He's wearing diving fins and a good snorkel and mask, and the line trailing from him leads to a small buoy to mark his location on the surface. It can also act as a flotation device. He also has a long spear gun which uses rubber bands to shoot the spears, though you can't really see it in the picture.
Here is some nice coral I saw about halfway, (maybe 100 yards) to the channel. Nice to see living vibrant coral heads like this, yeah?

When we reached the channel I took this shot of nearby land, to give an idea of how far out we were.
That red buoy is attached to Brolaw, who is hunting below. (Actually not hunting at this point, but trying to find the shark hole.)
This is a cropped magnified version of the photo above. Look carefully at the far left of the picture. That speck is a surfer. You can click on any of these photos to enlarge them.

Brolaw surfaced and waved me over.
"Okay, you see that hole?"
"Yeah."
"That's where the sharks usually come out of- maybe they're asleep or something. I'm going to go under that way and chase them up through the hole. You stay here and take pictures when they come up."
"Are you F*#*NG crazy?" I didn't say that, though. I mean I was already out there- instead I said-
"Cool!"
The picture above is Brolaw diving to get into the other entrance to the room the hole exits out of... AND-

No sharks. Brolaw is pissed. (I, however, am not.)


I'm thinking I'll be pretty happy taking pictures of sea slugs like the one above, as opposed to an 8 foot tiger shark and his 4 foot little buddy. Brolaw says "I'll poke his favorite kind of fish and when he smells 'em he'll come, guaranteed." Pretty amazing how deep Brolaw dives and how long he stays under, btw. He doesn't pressurize his ears by holding his nose and blowing, either. He's just used to it.

It took about 10 minutes for him to find and kill this fish. I can't remember what it is called. It is good eating though, I mean for humans, as well as sharks. It was a brain shot that entered just above one eye and came out of the other eye. He tied it to the buoy.

And we waited like half an hour. I took a ton of fish shots, but you've seen plenty of those in the other Kauai photoblogs... No sharks... Ain't that just how it is? Just like a puppy or a young daughter, sharks don't perform on cue. Anyway we headed back in, which took a while because we were fighting the current.

A neat coral formation on the way in.


That's the brain shot I talked about. The hole on top was made by the spear penetrating. The white bright gooey mass below is the actual eye, which popped out due to pressure, I suppose.


Sorry folks, no sharks this time. Hopefully (really?) I'll get some shark shots next time.

Cheers!