Below is about 55 minutes of tiger shark video clips from the Bahamas. It is partitioned into 5-minute chunks, which you can view via the “Scenes” interface. Alternatively, you can download the entire video, but it’s 650MB. (read more »)

I found an article on sixgill sharks which states that sixgills have “small, flourescent [sic] green eyes with a black pupil.”

That a perfect example of a writer writing about something he/she has never seen before. In many photographs, the eyes of a sixgill shark do glow green, but that is because sixgills have a tapetum lucidum (like cats do), which reflects light (and thus, appear to glow green when the light source is close to the camera’s lens). In fact, I’ve seen shark eyes reflect like frickin’ laser beams at night when the light source is moved around a bit. It’s creepy.

I’m going to write an article about cats. I found this photo:

Photo: Una Smith (Creative Commons)

… and have concluded that cats have one fluorescent green eye, one glowing red eye, and generally look pissed off. (read more »)

A sixgill shark in Seattle

First, a bit of history: Marty Snyderman introduced me to Travis Swanson at DEMA last year and told me that Travis was the “Jim Abernethy of the Pacific Northwest.” Howard Hall and Marty had been out with Hydrus earlier come back with fantastic images and video footage of sixgill sharks (Hexanchus griseus) in relatively shallow water. Sixgill sharks are a deep-water shark species rarely seen by recreational SCUBA divers, and I was really intrigued by the possibility of seeing one. Marty’s introduction prompted me to immediately book an exploratory trip with Travis and [Team Hydrus][teamhydrus]. I invited Douglas Seifert (contributing editor, Dive Magazine) and Simon Rogerson (editor, Dive Magazine) along for the trip; I travel with Douglas frequently, but it had been years since I had seen Simon. (read more »)

View Photos »

I’m in the Puget Sound off of Seattle diving with sixgill sharks (Hexanchus griseus). We just finished our first evening in the water, and had fantastic luck (we started at around 9pm). Matt Segal and I dropped in and had four female sixgills come in on the bait almost immediately. I felt tremendous privilege being in the water with them because they are such elusive animals; our habitats simply don’t normally have any overlap.

a sixgill shark in Seattle (Hexanchus griseus)

During Simon’s rotation, he saw a large sixgill (12 ft long, estimated) eating crabs. We’re told that this behavior has never been seen before, and hope to be able to capture it on video tomorrow night.

I always thought ratfish (Chimaeras) were rare (I photographed some in Alaska, but there were literally hundreds down at the bottom today, along with about a billion dungeness crabs. If you want to photograph ratfish, there is no need to fly off to some exotic place and descend down into the depths. Fly to Seattle, chuck some bait off of the side of your boat, and shoot as many photos as you need!

On the way up from the dive, we ascended through an algae bloom. I looked over at Matt while we were hanging at our safety stop, and the slight oscillation of the ascent line caused his body to throw off literally thousands of sparkling lights…

six-gill shark — count ‘em. there are six of them. :)

Continue reading for video updates from the field. I’ll be uploading video as time allows for the next three days. (read more »)

This image has been sent to me so many times that I thought I’d finally post it (presumably sent to me because it includes a “shark attack” item). I’m told that there are an average of five reported fatalities by shark attack each year, worldwide. This year, I believe there have been four high-profile, shark-related deaths so far. We’re ahead of schedule, it seems. (read more »)