It is unusual to have a ‘new’ shipwreck discovered in sport diving depths, especially in an area where there is plenty of good diving and lots of active divers. It is even more exciting when the location is in your ‘home patch’ -– in my case, waters that I have dived regularly for many years. Over these years, stories of undiscovered wrecks have come and gone – more among the deep, technical diving community than sport divers. The assumption has always been that these ‘shallower’ waters have been well explored and have no more surprises and any new wrecks will too deep for most divers.
Great credit is due to the team of five local divers who persisted in their search for this elusive World War I shipwreck, that of a mine-laying U-boat, UC-42, lost in 1917. See the news report here. Those of us who will get to explore this wonderful time capsule are grateful for the opportunity to visit the wreck and I am certain that any diver who does will accord it the respect those lost on it deserve.
My thanks to Graham and Ann Ferguson of Oceanaddicts. View a Gallery of images from an initial dive here.

Sometimes a unique moment just happens. On a shallow reef, at a dive site called Crystal Tiger, the late afternoon dive promised just as much shark activity as earlier in the day. With the change in tide, we had clear blue water and lots of Caribbean reef sharks, lemon sharks, and the occasional cautious approach from the king of the heap – the Tiger shark.

For this trip, I had mounted a small compact camera (in an underwater housing) on top of my main camera rig, with the view to taking some video clips–just for storytelling. By chance, I had started to record just a few moments before a large tiger shark showed up and was curious enough to come close. And close it came, as you will see from the video clip, and its curiosity reached the point where it wanted to have a feel of the lighting arms on my housing. The instant just before that moment gave me a beautiful composition of this magnificent creature, in the afternoon light, and it is an enduring moment which I treasure.

THAT_TigerShark_moment from John Collins on Vimeo.

Nikon D2Xs rig with Canon G12 on top
JC in action: Photo by Jim Abernethy

View more images of Sharks of the Bahama Banks here.

I have been fortunate in many years of diving to have had some fantastic encounters with the ocean’s most magnificent predator – the shark. To many, this is seen as a form of madness, as the stereotypical view of sharks is that of man-eating monsters. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth and the privilege of being in the water with sharks to observe them first-hand is a unique and humbling experience. The above photograph, was taken in the waters off the north-eastern corner of the grand Bahama bank – one of the few places in the world where you have a reasonable chance of seeing the Great Hammerhead up close. For hours spent in the water waiting patiently, you may only get a close encounter that lasts seconds, when the shark overcomes its cautious nature, and its curiosity gets the better of it.

Divers exploring the shipwreck of the stern dredger ‘Santo’, lost off Cork Harbour in 1900.

View a short movie, shot on a Sunday morning, edited Sunday evening, ready to share on Monday morning. Isn’t technology just fab ?!

Click here to view

The first glimpse is of a large black dorsal fin, high above the surface – the unmistakable hallmark of a shark. Closer scrutiny reveals the criss-cross swimming pattern of the tail fin, just above the water which tells the swimming direction. Finally, there is the occasional few seconds where the pointed snout can be seen, telling that it is indeed a Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus), a frequent visitor to the Irish coast in spring and early summer. This is the second largest fish in the sea, only bettered by the mighty Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus), pictured in the above silhouette. En route to an evening dive aboard Ocean Addicts ‘Oisre' (pronounced ‘osh-re’), on a perfect May evening, we spotted the tell-tale fin and managed to quietly slip in to the water on snorkel. Even though the shark seemed very leisurely and swimming very slowly, it was difficult to keep up with it for long. But with patience – and luck, watching the swimming movements gave some idea of the direction and most of us got a view of the long body cruising past. It is a privilege indeed to share a moment in the sea with such a large animal, quietly going about its passive feeding on the spring plankton bloom. Unlike its cousin the Great White shark, for whom it has been mistaken, these large sharks averaging 6 - 8 meters and weighing up to 4 tons, survive on plankton alone and do not have the feared jaws or teeth of its predatory kin. Still, many a snorkeller or diver has often asked the question ‘are you sure it’s a Basking shark?’, just before a helpful buddy gives them the push over the side of the boat to find out for themselves!

I first visited the Red Sea early in 1989 and dived the pristine reefs of Daedalus reef, the Brothers Islands and Ras Mohammed. I was en route from Brisbane, Australia to Marmaris in southern Turkey on board the tall ship ‘Amorina’. There were many experienced divers on board and we had experienced some amazing sights on the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives and by the time we got to the Red Sea, we thought that it would take a lot to impress us. The offshore reefs of Daedalus and the Brothers, being 40 miles from land were pristine ‘gardens of eden’ in the sea, but more surprising was the tip of the Sinai further north, at Ras Mohammed. Here, the reefs are immediately offshore and even in the 1980’s, fledgeling dive operations had begun to attract divers from all around the world.

Today, thousands of divers visit the northern Red Sea every week and it is a major part of the Egyptian tourist industry. Over the years, as operations and boats grew exponentially, many standards were allowed to slip but now both the Ras Mohammed National Park seems to be very well run. I was pleasantly surprised to find reefs and marine life in very good shape on a recent return to the waters of the Sinai.

I’ve recently received a copy of Jim Abernethy’s book ‘Sharks - Up Close’ which is simply superb. Many of us that have had the great privilege of seeing and photographing sharks know what magnificent creatures they are, but the plight of their plummeting numbers worldwide is not well known. Sharks’ role in keeping marine ecosystems in balance is critical to the health of the oceans but relentless overfishing threatens their very existence. The photograph above of Scalloped Hammerheads was taken in the waters of the northernmost Galapagos islands, Wolf and Darwin. When I look through my shark photographs now, I treasure the moment and wonder are they still there.