That feeding or attracting wildlife with food to enable better viewing opportunities by ecotourists (i.e. provisioning tourism) has the potential to alter the natural behaviour and physiology of animals has long been well established.
But how the physiological state of wildlife might be related to the nature and magnitude of these effects remains poorly understood.
The Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of Wonders) sank with a cargo of gold, silver, and gems on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank in 1656. The Spanish galleon was part of a fleet sailing to Spain from Havana with royal and privately-consigned treasures from the Americas. Failing to navigate shallow waters, however, it collided with the flagship of the fleet and hit a reef. Of the 650 people on board, only 45 survived.
On top of this, the first weekly direct flight from the UK with British Airways touched down in Nassau on the 31st May. All signs are good that other EU countries will soon follow.
This means that The Bahamas is open for business and the Bahamas Master’s fully vaccinated crew are waiting for you. Master Liveaboards are celebrating this with some amazing offers to kick off their Shark Season. You can save between 20% and 30% on a variety of itineraries in September and October of this year if you book in June.
All 32 members of the association offer our condolences to the families of those lives lost during the storm.
We have in fact heard from all our operators, and the only adversely affected areas are sadly the Abacos and portions of Grand Bahama Island. All the rest of the country’s 32 resorts, dive operators and liveaboards are up and running on their normal dive schedules.
Standing on the swim step, trying to time my entry with a gap in the dozen or more lemon sharks circling directly below me was a bit daunting the first go around. Of course, the sharks knew this routine well and skillfully avoided my clumsy splash into the water. The reward waiting beneath the surface was an assemblage of sharks that cannot be collectively encountered anywhere else in the world.
Tiger Beach in the Bahamas is firmly established as one of those global dive destinations of which almost everybody has heard. Its fame is largely derived from the many published images of its most celebrated visitor—Galeocerdo cuvier, the tiger shark.
The SEABOB is a luxury seatoy designed for “fun in the sun.” Corporate divers or technical divers are not invited to this party—unless they are vacationing, of course. No, this is a unit for scuba divers, free-divers or snorkelers, and meant to be purely recreational.
Like a fashion model up on the catwalk, great hammerhead sharks sashay into one’s field of vision, and, if they were human, you would probably say they have just “made an entrance”. Their strange mallet-like head, robust body girth and tall sickle-shaped dorsal fin make them well-nigh instantly recognisable, and most other sharks in the immediate area spot that too and give them a wide berth.
A fifty-minute flight southeast from the bustle, cruise ships and tourist-centric Nassau, lies the sleepy island of San Salvador. Twelve miles long and five miles wide, she is the tip of an underwater mountain rising from 5,000 metres below (15,000 feet) surrounded by picture-postcard, crystal-clear, blue seas.
Many people are scared witless by sharks, but I love them. I scuba dive and freedive with them whenever I can.
