Bottlenose and spotted dolphins were the focus of this trip, but lemon sharks and a tiger shark kept trying to steal the show.  I boarded the Gulf Stream Eagle in Riviera Beach, FL as part of Wild Ocean Adventures dolphin expedition, and crossed the gulf stream during the first night.  After clearing Bahamas customs on the first morning, we were off dolphin hunting.  But being wild animals with their own itineraries, we were nearly completely skunked for the first two days - just the luck of the draw.  To make up for the lack of dolphins, the crew offered up bonita heads to the local sharks, which made for some killer open-mouth shots with their expert wrangling.  One adult lemon shark (about 9.5’) managed to crack my dome shield while charging into my port.  I seem to go through an awful lot of those lately . . .  The images of the massive schools of snapper were shot on the 100+ year-old Sugar Wreck - mostly leveled, but still an uncountable quantity of fish, including a few lionfish.

But anyway, the dolphins finally showed up - the bottlenose with their “crater feeding”, and the spotted with their typical short attention span antics, but with overcast skies and difficulty getting shots from within that magic zone of 1’ to 2.5’, I didn’t feel like I landed “the shot”.   Although the encounters with the dolphins and tiger sharks were definitely below average, the most awesome crew, good ship, and great company from the Wild Ocean Adventures group made for a very enjoyable trip.  Can’t wait to get out there again!

I shot this trip with the Aquatica D2x housing exclusively using the Tokina 10-17 fisheye lens and two Ikelite DS-125 strobes (until 2 of my 3 died, and I was down to one after the second day).  I also filmed a just few minutes of HD footage of the lemon sharks.

And by the way - those hooks were in the lemon sharks BEFORE we got there!  We never use hooks to wrangle!