Who did we encounter?

It's a warm weekend day and the ocean is lazily lapping against the sandy shore. Out at the sand bar, small waves leap about and cause a beautiful white foam. Looking closely, one can see small fishes swimming within the waves... these same fish jump entertainingly out of the water when it's calm. A few feet away, a big black shape breaks into view and then dives into a wave, disapearing from sight.

CUE THE JAWS THEME MUSIC!

Remember those cute jumping fish? Well, apparently it's a sign that a shark is in the vacinity and the fish are attemting to escape. This bloggy post is a shoot off of my previous post about our trip to the beach/shark encounter. I found a really interesting post on wikihow about signs of a shark nearby and a few other pointers:

http://www.wikihow.com/Prevent-a-Shark-Attack
http://www.beachhunter.net/thingstoknow/sharks/ (this is a GREAT site)


I'm not going to list everything, obviously, which is why I'm sharing the link above... but here are the things we pretty much messed up on during our trip to the beach.

1) "Avoid deep dropoffs and the areas between sandbars". Well, we crossed that area in order to go stand on the sandbar.
2) "Avoid swimming near fishing activity". Well, there were plenty of fish around, and a ways down the beach there were fishers. There were also shrimping boats off in the distance.
3) "Stay out of the water at night and during dawn and dusk". We were swimming at about 8:00AM. Sharks are really active in th early morning and late evening.

Yeah. But here's what we did right:
1) We were aware of our surroundings.
2) We were wearing really calm colors. (Well, I was anyway. My bro was in orange and blue.) I wore black & slightly red swim trunks and a tan shirt. We also weren't wearing any kind of jewlery.
3) Remain calm (at least partially) and don't make a lot of splashing while heading to shore.

Here for instance: http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100819/ARTICLES/8191047/1118?Title=Gainesville-boy-bitten-by-shark-near-Crescent-Beach is a case I was told about, this little boy handled the situation very calmly and rationaly.

Now that we've covered how to properly avoid/handle shark encounters a bit, I'll give you a little insight on what shark types I consider possibilities of our encounter.

This website: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/nsrc/profiles.htm is a really good database about sharks and I was able to browse through tons of sharks and try to narrow down which one we most likely came into contact with.
I first started my resereach shark info tidbits that I already knew, like: bull sharks are one of the three most accounted for sharks known to attack people and they can swim in water as shallow as knee deep.
I built on my search from there: tiger and white sharks are the other two most common sharks to attack people unprovoked. Tiger sharks swim in shallower waters like bull sharks.

Bull Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/bullshark/bullshark.htm
Tiger Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/Tigershark/tigershark.htm
White Shark(Great White): http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/Whiteshark/whiteshark.html

I went ahead and read up on these three shark types but was already considering the fact that the shark we saw was not acting aggresively and was simply swimming away from us and the other two swimmers. Bull sharks and tiger sharks are quite aggressive and are know for launching unprovoked attacks, this shark did not act like it was about to attack.
So now I'm narrowing my search to shallow water swimming, less aggressive sharks. I also bring into my equation the shark's color. It wasn't a tan color that blended in with the sand or a bluishwhite color that was hard to make out in the water. It was black, or at least a dark enough color to really stand out.
So here's what I pulled together:

Blacktip Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/Blacktip/Blacktipshark.html
Spinner Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/spinnershark/spinnershark.html
Bonnethead Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/Bonnethead/Bonnethead.html
Great Hammerhead: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/GreatHammerhead/GHammerhead.html
Nurse Shark: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/nurseshark/nurseshark.htm

I know some of these sharks can get quite large but a shark will go where ever it can fit. Adolescent Great Hammerheads are known to lurk in shallow waters, for instance. Even large Bull Sharks and adolescent White Sharks have been found beached before. It's really common to see Blacktip sharks in shallow waters and Spinner sharks are know to jump out of waves near surfers. Nurser sharks enjoy shallow waters and are usually calm natured... but they *will* bite if provoked or stepped on (they like to lay on the bottom and they blend in really well).
So. After looking closely at all these sharks plus *many* more, I've narrowed down my list.

• Bull Shark
• Blacktip Shark
• Spinner Shark
• Bonnethead Shark
• Great Hammerhead

Yup, these are the sharks on my list of "most likely" encountered. I wish I could narrow it down right to the exact shark but that will be impossible because I lacked a closer look at it. This list of five sharks is a bit bigger then I would have liked.... but it's actually pretty good considereing that there are like, over 300 identified species of sharks in the world. So this is my list and these are my reasons for having each shark on this list:

• The BULL SHARK I'm keeping on my list because they are so commonly seen in this area and in the shallows, and because of their dark coloration. I know we talked earlier about how aggressive they can be but that doesn't mean they are out to get us. It's possible that it could have been a Bull shark and that it left without so much as a nibble of human flesh.
• The BLACKTIP and SPINNER SHARKS are on my list because they are extreamly common for the area we were swimming in and are often found in the shallows and near surfers.
• The GREAT HAMMERHEAD because it's not extreamly uncommon to find them in shallow waters, especially this time of year when the females are moving into shallower waters to give birth. Plus, adolescent Great Hammerheads are known to swim in shallower waters as well. Hammerheads are also quite shy which could lead to them leaving calmly and quietly. Hammerheads can also be dark in color.
• The BONNETHEAD SHARK because they tend to like shallower waters. I'm mainly keeping the Bonnethead on my list because I some what feel like there is a great chance that it would have been a Bonnethead as compared to another Hammerhead because the front end of shark I saw didn't seem to have that "hammer" shape... I'm not going to cut them from the list though. So if it were a type of Hammerhead it was most likely the Bonnethead because their heads are a bit smaller than the others and would therefore be harder for me to have distinguished from where I was standing.

So after hours of extensive research and calling upon my memory of the encounter, this is what I've come up with. I hope someone out there enjoys this and gets something from it. If anyone does read this, feel free to comment, I'd love to hear from you! You can even leave your own shark encounters/information if you'd like! Here's one more website I found to be awesome concerning sharks :) http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/shark-week/
Hope you've enjoyed this post.
Till next time.... swim at your own risk ;)
~RebelYell