Tiger shark etiquette

[PonoBill]

If someone tries to point out a shark to you and you can't see it, re-adjust your expectations to see something bigger. Even though people seem to have an idea that sharks are big they still look for something "fish-sized". Even a relatively small five-foot blacktip looks bigger than people seem to expect. I pointed out one to a friend once who couldn't see it at first. When he did, he almost jumped out of his skin. "It looked like the whole bottom moved!" It's just a matter of seeing what's there instead of what you're looking for. To me that looked like a little shark, to him it was too big to see.

Same thing happens looking for deer or elk on a hillside. I've looked for ten minutes and not seen one, but once I do I can see the other twenty that were there all along. Most recently it was bighorn sheep on the rocky cliff behind a house we rented near Palm Desert. Diane was exasperatedly trying to point them out to me and all I saw were rocks. Then I finally saw one, realized what size I was looking for and fifty of them popped into view.

Even though with a long dive career I've seen a lot of sharks I still miss some until they get close or do something obvious. I had no problem seeing a school of hammerheads above me a few years ago though. I had no idea that Hammerheads schooled until I had to come up through one on a dive at the back side of Molokini. I didn't take this picture--these are scalloped hammerheads off Cocos, the ones I've seen in Hawaii don't have scallops, but this is what it looked like except there was more variation in size:

[toolate]

yeah Pono, seems like mushroom hunting to me. you need eyes to see em sometimes unless (as happened to me in September) one launches mid air next to you