Okinawarelics.com: Dancing with Sharks, and Digging Teeth!

Clicking thru emails at work last Thursday I spy the following email:

I signed up for the Cape Fear dive for Sunday. Jeff is not going. So his tanks are available. Plus, my new tanks came today.

Glenn

Early morning at the dock.

A short and to the point note, now I have to make a last minute call on the dive. Why? Because I don’t feel lucky….. The dive makes sense however, first its on Sunday so I don’t have to burn up a day of leave, secondly the weather and sea conditions are predicted to be good, and Meg-Head got extra 120’s I can bum. But, something inside me lets me know if I go I will not score on the Meg’s.

I decide to bit the bullet and sign up and call Eric at the shop: “Yeh Man, should be good! I’m even going out, getting outta the shop, my first dive for Megs. Weather looks great. Wanna give me your credit card number to hold a slot?”

“Yeh man, sign me up!” I say. I think to myself after hanging up the diving will be worth it, even if I don’t score big on the teeth scale. I just hope the bad feeling is not something worse like a premonition of a mishap….

Sunday morning I pull into a Hotel parking lot to pick up ole Meg-head. Glenn’s in high spirits as he’s the one feeling lucky today. That’s good for him! I say something about working hard on the bottom to even out my chances and who really knows about luck anyway.

Check out Scott's fin as he counts over 30!

At the docks, it’s the usual suspects. Big time local hunters Scott and Stan are on hand to give Meg-Head and Captain Guy a run for the money. Junior league scavengers, myself included are here too. Corporal Long and his cousin Trevor return from last months dive to try to up their numbers. They’ve the Meg flu. Dive shop countermen past and present Billy and Eric are going to pass the torch on vacuuming the bottom. An added bonus is having a bevy of young women divers take part on this charter. I know Captain Guy’s happy about that fact, and keeps a lookout to assist them when needed.

Dive conditions were great on the ledge and I figured I’d be able to do some big-time fanning on the bottom and pull up some choice mantle piece teeth. After, going down the anchor line and checking my gear, I slid my gloved hand thru my swim paddle and started to push up the bottom inside out. I pushed and pushed until I had to stop and switch hands. Finally, after 10 minutes and who knows how much sand I got a nice 4 incher followed soon by another 4 incher. With 4 minutes bottom time left I fanned and scanned the sand to no avail. “Not a good haul” I thought to myself as I ascended up to about 90 feet.

Visibility on the bottom was excellent, however at mid-water vis was poor. Oddly there were no thermoclines present. As usual I was one the first one back on deck due to my terrible air consumption rate however; as the divers came out of the water from the initial dive some big scores were ready to be shown on the deck. Scott pulled up a heavily loaded bag from the sea bottom and as he spilled out the contents some fine large teeth out of the 33 or so he found made this a awesome haul! After everyone was back on deck, Billy and Meg-Head each showed off a 6+ inch tooth they scored! Eric released from his shackles on the dive shop counter, scored 13 teeth on his first dive on the Ledge.

Captain Guy doing the song and dance
"I got teeth on my belly"

Captain Guy went down during the off-gas period and sure enough, all the divers got to see the hidden teeth in the wetsuit comedy show that Cape Fear is famous for! How does he get so many teeth each time is amazing!

Anyway, I was pumped to have another go at the bottom and was the first diver in and headed down the line. I worked the sand hard to no avail, then switching tactics swam a bit trying to pick out shapes in the sand. When I was at the end of bottom time I saw Meg-head and after swapping some signals I headed toward the anchor line on my compass heading. I was bummed as I only had 2 small 3 inch teeth, what crappy luck, just like I felt before signing up.

As I swam in the general direction of the boat and ascended slowly I could not pick up the line in the gloom. What I did see were the bubble stream coming up from the bottom even though I could not see the divers or the bottom.

Meg-Head's big 6 inch!

I made a bad decision at that time. Rather, than swim in the general heading of the compass I decided to ascend around the bubble stream thinking that the divers on the bottom are near the ship. As I started my safety stop at 20 feet I still couldn’t see the boat even though I was in a sea of bubbles coming from below. I knew I woundn’t like what I saw when I broke the surface, and sure enough as I emerged slowly from below and my mask broke the water there she was…….. way…. the…. F**K…..over there.

Anyway, I had a nice swim back to the boat by myself, and wondered what happened.

What is it? We didn't know either.
Maybe a fossilized tree nut?

After the long swim back, stowing the gear, grabbing a sandwich and coke other divers started to pop-up way out, off starboard. Tiffany and Scott went out and swam the line out to help out the other divers while Captain Guy coordinated the rescue efforts. He needed a smoke after that…. Well, that explained why I was out of the area too, referencing their bubbles and all.
The third dive was on the Hyde and the sharks were out in force! I counted 16 off the stern and too close for my comfort with beasts coming out of the gloom from every direction. I headed back where more divers were and kept my eyes peeled the remainder of the dive.

Sharks on the Hyde
Photo by Tom Tilmon
For more diving action check out his site at:

http://members.aol.com/fpsndiver/fpsn11.html