Magic. That may be the most apt description of this otherworldly, underwater place. There, in the depths below the Shearwater, a tornado of sharks—lemons, nurses and tigers—churned in the water against a backdrop of red, yellow and purple coral.
Jim found this spot years ago and called it Tiger Beach, a place some 20 miles off the coast of Grand Bahama’s West End, the oldest and most westerly town on the island. Because it’s shallow—no more than 10 meters deep—and because Bahamian water is warm, glassy, and clear as gin, Tiger Beach, now a PADI-classified dive site, is the idyllic spot to encounter these notorious marine predators.
As I ogled this underwater Garden of Eden, Jim busied himself by trying to remove fishing hooks from the sharks’ jaws. When our tanks were just about out of oxygen, we surfaced. Triumphantly, Jim dangled one of the successfully removed hooks.
“See? We had no reason to be scared of them,” he said. “But they certainly have reason to be scared of us.”