Tuesday, June 10, 2008

My first Great Hammerhead Shark

Photo: Lyn Nelson

... I was going through some old Nassau pics tonight, and came across this one, taken back in April 1975.

I remember I had just speared a fish when this great hammerhead zoomed in out of nowhere and scared the you know what out of me. At that time even hammerhead sharks were considered to be dangerous to man, and I had no reason not to believe it.

Incidentally, this was the year "Jaws", that most disastrous Benchley / Spielberg blockbuster movie was shown in the Bahamas.

Those were the times when freedivers were called 'skin divers', an appropriate term considering that when we dove, we were indeed all skin, except for a tiny swimming trunk we wore. Kind of like today's sexy Speedos that just have to hide the "boongie" (= Bahamian for butt) and the more important "family jewels"... :-)

My dive companion, Lyn Nelson, shot the pic from the dinghy we rented to dive in the greater Nassau area. Lyn would not dare to come in, and she he thought I was 'crazy ' to dive down to get closer to the shark. Mind you, she was a qualified dive instructor... Well, as I said - what we knew about sharks back then was rudimentary at best.

By the way: Look at the 'Oceanicdreams' logo, and look at me diving down - get it?

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