As promised in yesterday's blog, here's an additional photo from our "Swim with the Mantas" session. This photo shows a manta doing a back flip as it circles a school of small fish. The "flaps" indicate the position of the mouth (a manta is a filter feeder) and the two whitish "lumps" on the right side of the manta in the photo are two remoras. Remoras have a suction cup on the top of their body and they suction themselves to other fish (and sometimes also try to suction themselves on to people who are in the water trying to clean the boat bottom --- just ask Sam about that one.) A couple of weeks ago we saw a large porpoise that had a Remora stuck over one of it eyes. The porpoise positioned itself right in front of our port bow and kept swimming and spinning in an apparent attempt to bump the Remora off its eye by hitting the bow with the remora. Regretfully, the porpoise was not able to dislodge the remora.

Hmmm. . . how about some more shark stories? After finishing snorkeling with the mantas, we were in the process of getting back onto Gaston's boat. When it was my turn, Gaston noted that he had drifted precariously close to some coral heads, so I had to swim away while he started the outboard up again and moved to a different location. So, there I am with one fin already off (as I had been preparing to climb in using the outboard transom as a step over the stern of the boat) and trying to awkwardly swim to the new boat position on the other side of some coral heads when a large white tip shark glides by about four feet from me. Thankfully, white tips are not usually aggressive (another "beagle" type shark --- see my earlier post), but I did take the time at that point to put my other fin back on so I could actually swim instead of flail around in water.

After we were back onto our boat, I then decided to go snorkeling a bit more, since I was already wet and geared up. Sam didn't feel like going and the girls were heading over to shore with two French boys from two other boats, so I swam over to check out the fish traps myself. All was going fine until I noticed a 6 foot gray shark. Some gray reef sharks are similar in temperament to black tip and white tip sharks. Some, however, are known to be aggressive. I find it pretty hard to distinguish between gray sharks in the water, so I decided to just mosey on back to the boat. After I described it to the local boys later that night, they said it was "just a baby" since it was "only 6 feet long" and that the gray sharks in their area are not aggressive. They also said that the gray sharks are "scared of Tahitian man" and that they dart away when they see them. (I think a bit of bravado was being put on display for my benefit at that point.) Nonetheless, I think that I will avoid the gray sharks whenever possible.