In June 2007 fellow Ashford Dive Club member Chris Powell and I spent eleven nights aboard Jim Abernethy’s MV Shear Water for a trip in the waters around the Bahamas searching for Oceanic Whitetip and Tiger sharks. It proved to be my most enjoyable and exciting liveaboard adventure to date.

Jim Abernethy has been diving with sharks for thirty years and running trips on the Shear Water for over eight and seems driven by an enthusiasm for life although that desire for adventure remains secondary to client safety. In underwater photography circles he is well known as a passionate ambassador for sharks and for taking organisations like IMAX, National Geographic and the BBC Natural History Unit to film and photograph the sharks of the Bahamas. The resulting popular productions have undoubtedly positively changed many people’s perceptions of sharks. I found his exhaustive shark dive briefings not only extensive but educational as well. Everyone entered the water understanding the risks and having been drilled on how they must behave underwater. We learnt to treat sharks, although not intentionally aggressive towards divers, as predators that need to be respected. When on a few occasions, someone failed to comply with Jim’s rules, he was quick to take them aside for a quiet word.

Chris had already endured two nights with me in Palm Beach, Florida where he at least had the consolation of a day time dive under the Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge with me. Now boarding Shear Water I somehow managed to get my directions wrong, bagging a cabin all to myself! Tropical Storm Barry then delayed Shear Water’s departure from Palm Beach, enabling Chris and I to do a night dive under the Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge but at 2.00 a.m. the following morning the seas had calmed enough for Jim Abernethy to begin our journey to The Bahamas.

We arrived around the middle of the following day and immediately began fishing for bait. There is no shark feeding permitted on Jim’s trips. Closed milk crates containing fish parts are lowered into the water and secured at the dive site. The fish scent attracts sharks so that divers can observe and or photograph the animals. When necessary fresh bait is caught to lure sharks to the crates which divers are instructed to stay away from. This procedure is considered far safer than other shark dives in the Bahamas, where operators wear chain mail suits and hand feed sharks, inducing a feeding frenzy. As a result, on Jim’s dives, the sharks are calm and non-aggressive. With the closed milk crates hanging beneath the buoy next to MV Shear Water Chris and I slowly slid into the water (my dive 1437) for what for me was my first underwater sighting of an Oceanic Whitetip. Beneath us we could see three Nurse Sharks and in addition to the Oceanic Whitetips, seven Dusky Sharks and two Lemon Sharks. A brilliant beginning to a superb dive trip. Jim said that he did not want the location of the area where we saw these sharks to be revealed on the internet so I will not provide any clues on my website.

After a second dive we spent a night moored in a bay nearby before returning to the same dive site the next day for three more dives with the Oceanic Whitetips. I had confidently expected this shark trip to be exciting, I had not anticipated that it would be educational as well. I suspect that it is only by diving with these so-called dangerous sharks that you appreciate that they need not be dangerous if approached in a way that does not replicate the actions or appearance of their natural food source. Gradually the Oceanic Whitetips seemed to have lost interest in the bait and although we dropped in the water again and hung around the bait for forty minutes the sharks were nowhere to be seen. In the evening Chris and I and two MV Shear Water crew explored the reef of a nearby small island and the next day enjoyed two more dives this day with a Silky Shark as well as Oceanic White Tips and then to conclude the day’s diving, a late afternoon macro photography dive at MV Shear Water’s overnight mooring.

The following morning we returned once again to the same dive site for three final dives with the Oceanic Whitetips as well as Duskies, Silkies, Lemon Sharks and far beneath us Nurse Sharks. Climbing back aboard MV Shear Water after the first very shallow dive Mike, one of the ship’s crew, assuming that I wanted to continue with extremely shallow diving, asked if I would like an immediate air fill so that I could get straight back into the water. I enthusiastically said that I would. But failed to appreciate that in order to give me some air for my tank, Mike stopped filling Chris’s tank! This prompted howls of protest from Chris so after my second dive when events looked like repeating themselves, I thought it best to decline Mike’s kind invitation. Chris had already had to put up with my snoring in Palm Beach so pinching his air, albeit unintentionally, was hardly fair. An evening macro photography dive at our overnight mooring concluded the day.

We fished all the next morning for fresh bait without success and no Oceanic Whitetips turned up to feed from our old floating bait. So in the afternoon Jim took us to a sea mount where on previous trips he had seen a variety of sharks in the water. We were not so lucky and the highlights of two dives at this location were Queen Triggerfish, a Balloonfish and a Nassau Grouper.

At 4.00 a.m. the following morning MV Shear Water upped anchor and set off for a small island used for the James Bond Thunderball movie. After that we travelled on a short distance to an island where we snorkelled with wild pigs! Next up was Amberjack Reef where much of the remaining and by now extremely smelly bait was lowered into the water for the last time. This drew in numerous Caribbean Reef Sharks as well as Groupers, Jacks and other reef life, which made for a very exciting dive, my dive 1452. Afterwards we moored in a sheltered bay where Jim Abernethy turned off the ship’s lights so that we could gaze up the clear night at thousands of twinkling stars.

After breakfast Jim Abernethy beached MV Shear Water so that we could photograph resident iguanas on the beach before setting off for our next dive site, The Blue Hole, south south-east of New Providence Island. Together with Charles Hood, our Divequest leader, I dropped slowly down into The Blue Hole passing through two thermoclines. As I reached the bottom the shield of my Subal ND20 dome port snapped and fell off. This had happened to me once before when, with Chris, I had dived through a thermocline in Vobster Quay, UK in 2006. It seemed I had been doubly unlucky - both my original shield and its free replacement had been from the same faulty Subal batch. Fortunately the next free replacement proved thermocline proof but for rest of this trip I used lots of waterproof tape to keep a rather wobbly broken shield in place. Charles took a photograph of me descending into the Blue Hole which I liked so much that I have used it for my About Me profile section of this website. Ascending slowly out of the Blue Hole I photographed two large Nurse Sharks near the rim and a short while later MV Shear Water started a 16 hour journey past New Providence Island to the legendry Tiger Beach.

Arriving at Tiger Beach at breakfast time Jim and his crew Mike and John quickly set about fishing for bait for Tiger Sharks. As they did so Lemon Sharks with accompanying Remoras glided by the stern of the boat. Some of the Remoras became caught on fishing lines and I was given the dubious honour of removing one particularly slimy one from the hook so that it could be thrown back into the water. Yuuck! (Yes I know I am a wimp) After a comprehensive safety briefing Chris and I slid into the water for our first Tiger Shark dive. At least ten large Lemon Sharks patrolled the shallow sandy sea bed beneath Shear Water and cruising amongst them were three Tiger Sharks. Two of these appeared to be about 2.1 metres long, the third Jim’s favourite, Emma about 4.3 metres long. We had been instructed by Jim to concentrate at all times on the Tiger Sharks and to watch each other’s backs. It seemed rather bizarre to simply ignore the large Lemon Sharks that cruised around us. To anyone not familiar with them, the Lemon Sharks appearance could well be considered frightening but I quickly came to accept that provided I made no aggressive action towards them they were perfectly harmless. After a suitable surface interval Chris and I dropped back into the water again. Jim was in his element orchestrating the divers and playing happily with Emma. There were so many photo opportunities I had to try to be selective. Even so I managed to fill up my memory card at least 10 minutes before the end of the dive. By way of a change we did two macro photography shallow wreck dives at Sugar Wreck, Little Bahama Bank for our final dives of the day.

My last day’s diving from MV Shear Water did not begin too well. I used to frequently strain a muscle in my lower back and this would incapacitate me for for several days at a time. But a combination of regular Pilates exercises and a Meloxicam arthritis prescription had made this a problem of the past. Or so I thought. Stupidly I had not done any Pilates exercises while aboard and I had mislaid my Meloxicam. When bending over before breakfast I suddenly felt a familiar stabbing pain in my lower back. What a dilemma. I did not want to forego any diving but knew I would have to be extremely careful as my back could now easily go into spasm. From experience I knew that once I was in the water, the weightless environment would actually ease the pain in my back. But then to complicate matters my Inon flash guns began to malfunction and predictably with two problems to contend with, the first dive of the day, at Carcarius Cut with Caribbean Reef Sharks, proved photographically disappointing. We returned to Tiger Beach and took photographs of Lemon Sharks from the back platform of the boat, our cameras just inches from the sharks’ teeth before a spectacular ending to a superb holiday. It was time for our final two dives and I am not sure whether it was a coincidence but this certainly was the most spectacular diving of the entire trip. Jim was like a circus master orchestrating the sharks with Emma his undoubted star. Twelve two to three metre long Lemon sharks swam around us. To Chris’s great amusement one Lemon shark approached me from behind, swimming over the top of my head. I was unaware of it and at the last second, with a lazy swing of its large tail, it gave me an unintentional but almighty thump to my head. Eventually the show just had to end. As soon as Jim left the water the excitement dissipated.

It was now time to pack up and make our way back to Palm Beach, USA. Predictably Chris’s and my clothes smelt strongly of fish bait. However when collecting my luggage from MV Shear Water’s offices in Palm Beach I found that Eve had sneaked some fresh clothes into my suitcase so that I would not go home smelly. Although it was a nice surprise I did think her choice of clothes for me rather strange, not least because the trousers were definitely a little on the short side. Chris gave me one or two strange looks which I assumed was because I was wearing such ill-fitting trousers. It was only on our way to the airport that Chris reminded me that for safe keeping, eleven days earlier he had placed his “homeward bound travelling clothes” in my suitcase.

Jim has introduced thousands of divers to sharks including many species which the media has misrepresented as mindless man-eaters. Certainly I never felt threatened or scared by the sharks we saw. Rather I felt angry that sharks like Emma are being killed in large numbers every day. A growing number are approaching extinction, with over one hundred million sharks killed each year. For Chris and I, it had been a fantastic experience to be able to swim with and photograph these majestic creatures and I left MV Shear Water feeling I should do more to aid shark conservation. So upon returning to the UK I joined The Shark Trust.