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SPECIAL REPORTS - Tuesday 25January 2005
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They're the biggest chickens of the ocean
And it's not the only thing divers learn about hammerhead sharks

By Susan Cocking, Knight-Ridder

COCOS ISLAND, Costa Rica -- Lying 30 metres deep on a rocky tabletop sea mount, I am surrounded by scores of scalloped hammerhead sharks. Lazily, the sharks -- some up to three metres long -- circle the pinnacle, occasionally tilting an outrigger-mounted eye down to glance at me.

Resting motionless on the rock about 1.5 m from me is a small whitetip reef shark. We, too, exchange glances, and I notice that this four-footer bears a substantial bite wound in its flank. The wound has begun to heal over but it is deep enough that I can see distinctly the dental impression of whatever bit it. These were some very big teeth.

"Yeah, you better lay low," the whitetip's war-weary look seems to say.

I look up again to see a hammerhead about three metres above me and I expel a somewhat anxious breath into my regulator. A cloud of bubbles floats up toward the circling animal.

If a shark could somehow look alarmed, this hammerhead does. It shakes its head, flicks its massive tail and quickly disappears into the gloom. I had scared it off simply by breathing.

"Big and powerful sharks but they're the biggest chicken in the ocean," says Toby Meinken, dive instructor on the Undersea Hunter.

And that wasn't the only thing I was to learn about sharks during a week of diving at Cocos Island.

This atoll, located 530 km southwest of Costa Rica, is widely considered to be "Shark Central." Uninhabited except for a handful of park rangers, Cocos sticks up above the ocean's surface -- steep, starkly green with dense vegetation and lined with waterfalls. Because it is located out in the middle of nowhere, it acts as a sort of truck-stop for marine creatures, especially sharks.

Numerous documentaries have been shot here, including the popular IMAX feature, Island of the Sharks. One of Cocos' more scenic falls was featured in Jurassic Park. Scientists, filmmakers and recreational divers salivate to visit the pristine waters around the island. Only two operators -- Undersea Hunter and Aggressor -- bring visitors here. Commercial fishing is banned out to 20 km.

This leaves the sharks -- besides the hammerhead and whitetip, there are silky, Galapagos, dusky, silvertip, blacktip and whale -- in relative peace to relax, get their gills and hides cleaned of parasites and war wounds by barberfish and king angelfish and to gird themselves for hunting and mating.

With such a manana attitude, the majority of sharks tend to pay scant attention to divers. We humans are just part of the scenery as everyday life plays out on the reefs and surrounding Cocos.

Fear Factor this is not. Some of the sharks' antics are comically inept.

The whitetips, ubiquitous in daylight as they loll around resting, become frenzied hunters at night.

Illuminated by our dive lights, a school of about 50 whitetips dashed frantically around a six-metre-deep reef poking their heads down into holes and caverns in a vain attempt to chow down on barberfish and surgeonfish. Several got stuck. Most went hungry. They tended to ignore slow-moving, open-water targets and wait until a jack had chased a fish into a cave before going after it. Watching them, I wondered why the species hadn't gone extinct.

Still, you have to pay attention when diving at Cocos.

"The silkies are fearless about divers," said Undersea Hunter captain Nelson Diaz. "When they are feeding, they get aggressive. ."

None of our group of 10 experienced anything remotely hazardous during our weeklong, three-per-day shark dives at Cocos. It was just fun and interesting to watch wild animals going about their business
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

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