Thursday, July 09, 2009

Tiger in Fiji!


Isn't she cute? Yes, it's Scarface - snuggling up to her friend Rusi!
And what a great pic: as anticipated, Lill is getting better and better!

From FiNS Magazine, July 3, 2009.

If you are lucky, you might find yourself diving with a pretty, large female tiger shark on the famous Shark Dive in Fiji, Beqa Lagoon.

She is named “Scarface”, and she has been a regular visitor on the Shark Dive for the last seven to eight years. Everyone is thrilled, both guests and staff, whenever she decides to drop by for a fishhead-snack, along with the 15-40 bull sharks that come in to feed on every dive.

Scarface left this dive site in November last year, heavily pregnant, to give birth somewhere else. She came back on April 27th, after a five-month “maternity leave”, and she’s been around since.

There is no need to be scared if you meet her! She is very sweet, slow and mellow, and she is only there to get her piece of free fish…and to say hello to her old friend, Rusi the Fijian shark feeder, whom she has been around for years.

Some of the other sharks you normally encounter on a day of shark diving include the friendly tawny nurse sharks at 30 meters, the fast-swimming grey reef sharks that come blasting in at ten meters, and finally the whitetip and blacktip reef sharks at around four meters. This last part of the first dive must be the best safety stop ever!

On the second dive of the day, big bulls and sometimes a tiger shark dominate at 16 meters. Occasionally you will also see silvertip sharks and sickle fin lemon sharks on this dive. If you want to experience diving with different types of sharks, this is definitely the place to be.

And then this.
View more pictures from a day of shark-diving in Fiji.

I've asked Lill whether this was really all from just one day she assures me it is.
Very impressive indeed!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Snuggling - HOW DARE YOU USE THAT WORD IN THE SAME SENTENCE AS SHARK ;)

At least those were the comments I used to get from people...

DaShark said...

Apologies - I misspoke! (:

Tafa said...

Some really nice pics there. I should be comming down to the shop around lunch to check on my AOW cert.