At Criobe, this is how we roll.



We faced some challenges this morning. We were supposed to take this boat down to the water with the homemade trailer that it lives on. Unfortunately, the rusty wheel broke after we towed it about ten feet. This was the solution that we came up with. The outboard motor is in the back of the truck. We put it back on the boat after we got it in the water. The whole experience had a bit of a third world flavor too it but we managed to get out on the water and get to the dive site we wanted to get to. We even caught the two clown fish we were after.

We dove on the outside of the reef on the north side of the island. It was really pretty and it was much different than the inside of the lagoon. The coral seems to be a lot more diverse and there are a lot more fish. The fish seem to be a lot bigger as well. One of the most conspicuous differences was the sharks. There were lots of black tip reef sharks. A group of four or five of them followed us for most of the dive and circled us while we were netting the clownfish. Apparently there's a tourist diving operation in the area of that dive site that has shark feeding shows. We were speculating that the feeding must not have happened today (because it was kind of windy and they might not have wanted to go out). The sharks kind of seemed like they might be hanging around because they thought we'd feed them.

On the other hand, I've also been followed by this kind of shark on Midway island where there's no tourism at all, let alone shark feeding. Maybe they just like me. These sharks very rarely cause any problems for divers and I never felt threatened by them. I was glad to see them. I got a couple of halfway decent pictures and a bunch of short crappy digital videos of them. I think we're supposed to go outside again tomorrow. I'd really like to see a lemon shark before I go. Maybe we'll get one of those tomorrow. No tiger sharks though please.