My First Shark Encounter!

I did two dives this morning with my buddy Dan at Three Tree Point, Burien, WA (Puget Sound).  It was good but uneventful until we nearly bumped into a six-gill shark (8ft long) at a depth of 60ft.  Visibility was only 10-20ft.  Dan saw it first and was close enough to touch it.  Talk about shock and awe!  The shark didn’t seem to mind us as he moved slowly through the murky green water.  We followed close, trying to get a good camera shot, but after the first glimpse it didn’t profile again. We stayed with him for a few minutes until he turned and moved into deeper water.  We were already on our return trip, low on gas, so didn’t follow, although it was very tempting.  We turned in the opposite direction and headed for the beach, both of us feeling a bit anxious knowing there was a large predator somewhere in the dark behind us.  A few moments later, at about 30ft, we came upon a school of white squid (15-20), 5-6 inches long, and what appeared to be an egg sack attached to a branch of some type of sea foliage.  They swam away as we approached, but a few seemed to hang back to study me as I studied them.  They were just inches from my mask. 

On our second dive we hoped to encounter the shark again, but did not.  Instead, we saw two wolf eels, a giant pacific octopus and two large rat fish.  Dan took several nice photos, some of which are shown here. We didn’t get a full body shot of the shark due to his size, moving away from us, and low visibility.

This was, without question, my best diving experience so far.  Simply awesome!  This one will long be remembered.