Guide to Programs
Programs by Age
School Partnerships
- Global Development Programs
- Custom Programs
Programs by Interests
View all trip costs and dates >

New To Broadreach? >
Why Broadreach?
About Us
Experience Broadreach

Fiji Shark Studies

SS21 Update - Monday, July 23, 2012

feeding frenzy

We dove right back into diving today. We were out in the Shark Reef Marine Reserve again checking out all the fun, exciting sharks. We were happy to see our favorite sharks, ranging from the massive bull sharks to the gentle, peaceful whitetip reef sharks. We had a fantastic time exploring their world yet again. We love seeing the similarities and changes that happen each new dive. Today was no exception; we got a ton of new exciting action. The highlight of the dives for most of us was the second stop of our first dive. We like always were expecting to see a few whitetips and a few gray reef sharks. But today we were in for a big surprise. There were at least 15 gray reefs in a very aggressive mood. They would swim by roughly grab the food from the feeder and then swim right by us. I was probably hit by at least five shark tails today, and that is no exaggeration. They were swimming over us, around us, even through us. The dive masters were having a difficult time keeping them away from us. They were not at all acting aggressive towards us, but there was still a major concern with their closeness. Luckily nothing bad happened and we all got a killer thrill out of all the excitement.

The rest of the dive was a blast as well. It started out, like always, with a bull shark dive at 100 feet. We got to see lots of carcharhinus leucas feed. The highlight of this part of the dive was when Monica, a big fat bull shark with a large bump on her caudal fin (the tail fin for those of you that were wondering), whacked her chin on a protruding piece of coral while trying to get a fish head. We all had a great laugh and she didn’t come out too bad, still enjoying three large fish heads. Next we moved up to the second part of the dive that I have already described. After that we got to enjoy one of the best safety stops of all time, another shark feed. At 10 feet there are only small whitetip reef sharks and blacktip sharks. These have got to be the friendliest of all the sharks. They would weave through our legs, tickling us with their tails. Also there were beautiful parrot fish and sergeant majors. Unfortunately Moby, the friendly moray eel, didn’t show up today. We came out of the water squealing with excitement.

Our second dive was a blend between a soft coral and a shark feed. We started off with a feed at 80 feet. It was really exciting because on the way to the feed site I got within 6 inches of a 9 foot bull shark. When we arrived we enjoyed the feed, with north of 30 large bull sharks. Fran enjoyed making coral houses while watching the feed occur. Justin contributed to this effort along with Guilia. Then came my favorite part the soft coral dive. Justin and Caroline were constantly on the search for nudibranches, small extremely colorful worm-like creatures. Jonathan spotted an adorable baby clown fish living in an anemone, just like in Nemo. Garnett then found a beautiful puffer-fish. We all had an amazing time adventuring and exploring the wonders of the ocean.

Tired out we returned home. We relaxed and Juliette made a fresh batch of her special ice coffee, which truthfully is delicious. We swam in our pool and then Robert and Justin led us in a group abs work, which ended up only taking three minutes because we were tired out and wanted to eat lunch. We got to have a lovely freshly made sandwich and pineapple; although, a few kids helped themselves to my stash of Fijian Ramen, including myself. After lunch it was back out to the pool to either swim or work on our species project, mine focusing on the carcharodon carcharias, or better known as the Great White. Jacob impressed us all with his great worm ability. We then got our sixth lecture, this one was focused on research on sharks, in honor of our up and coming research projects. After this we received our midterms back, which gladly everyone did well on. Now we are all slaving away working to finish our species projects for tomorrow. Natalie came up with an amazing rap to educate all of us on the thresher shark and I can’t wait to hear it!

Andrew Morgan