Compliments of the hubby

Every time I read something that Peter has drafted, I think that HE should be writing this blog!  You all would certainly be more entertained than I keep you. :)

Anyhow - he wrote quite a novel to our family updating them on our life here on Kwaj.  I just HAD to copy and paste the excerpt below where he describes the two boat dives we went on yesterday.  It had me in stitches!  Here you are:

"...Today (or yesterday - since I won't likely get this completed tonight), we went diving again.  This time from a boat, so our first stop was the Prinz Eugen followed by a dive on the ocean side wall of South Kwajalein.  Awesome dives in both places - and for the paranoid out there - yes, we saw numerous sharks on both dives.  The ones on the ocean side actually made me a bit nervous (whitetip reef sharks) since one was more interested in what we were doing than I thought he should be.  More on that later, though.

First, the Prinz Eugen.  Possibly a 10 minute boat ride (depending on your captain) from Kwajalein on the west side of the atoll (lagoon side) lies the Prinz Eugen (pronounced something like "ouy-gen" with a soft "g"), upside down with its screws in the air and its bow sitting at about 110' of water.  We had five divers on our boat, so Marissa, myself, and another diver were in the water waiting for our final two to get in before we went subsurface.  Our other diver in the water (who had his head under the water watching fish below us) informed us we had a shark below us.  Like ducks, we were immediately "bottoms-up" and watching a cute little whitetip wander by below us (between 2'-3' in length).  Nice, great start to the dive. 

At the edge of the Prinz Eugen, we dropped down to 30' and followed the hull down to around 107'.  At that point, we crossed under the bow to the other side of the ship.  Being polite, Marissa and I were taking up the tail of the dive while the other divers crossed under (the superstructure of the bow boat created a natural swim-thru that looks pretty cool in photographs).  As the other divers passed under, Marissa tugs my arm and points to a lovely specimen of blacktip reef shark (about 5' in length) roughly 20' from us.  He watched us for a moment and then turned his more pleasant side towards us and headed away.  SWEET!  And they had told us we would be unlikely to see any sharks on this dive!  The rest of the dive was very relaxing with a HUGE puffer fish and some torpedoes - along with several other pretty underwater things.

Dive two.  South Kwajalein wall - ocean side...  It's interesting.  Inside the lagoon, things are pretty protected and the critters that live there are pretty used to people being around.  On the ocean side, things are a bit more wild and we are encouraged to use more caution as a rule.  The wall?  B E A U T I F U L.  Tons of fish, tons (literally) of coral, great visibility and life everywhere.  I can't begin to list all that we saw (including a turtle), but I'll add some details to what I know you all have been waiting for - sharks...  Yes, more of them.  I was at the front of our dive posse and we were pretty shallow ~55' and moving pretty slow since there was so much to look at, when I noticed four whitetip reef sharks circling very fast in a tight circle in front of us.  They were quite a bit larger than the ones we had seen previously (between 4' and 5') and I was remembering their tight, fast circles from a few evenings back at the marlin based feeding frenzy.  Hmmmm, going to put the brakes on a little and let the others know...  Nobody was paying attention to my gestures (okay, frantic underwater waving - my specialty).  About that time, one of the sharks peeled off and headed up the reef.  Another one dropped out of the circle and headed towards me.  Straight towards me...  Marissa had the camera and I started wishing I had it to stick out in front of me as a bite offering - anything better than my hand...  I quit my imitation of a seal flapping his flipper in the water at the other seals and tried to look as uninteresting as possible.  No dice - still heading right at me...  Did I mention he was headed right at me?  25'... 20'...  I readied my hand on my safe-second (backup regulator) to give him a blast of O2 to the snoozle before he was within nipping distance.  I want to take a moment to mention that never once did I think he wanted to eat me.  I was pretty sure he was curious and possibly a little threatened by this strange sounding creature with the saucer-sized eyes.  What I was worried about was the many times I've seen our cat be "curious" about something and then give it a little bite just to see how it responds.  Not wanting to satisfy this shark's curiosity was primary on my agenda.  15' now... and he swerved away towards the ocean side.  Good, take a breath, you earned it...  Oops, he's coming back.  Still directly at me.  I tried to look tough.  He didn't seem to care.  I'm also trying to keep an eye on the other two that are now almost to my rear as I had rotated to keep my front towards my interested friend.  Marissa and our other divers now seem to have taken notice of my distraction.  20' again...  15'...  crap.  10'...  and he swerved again.  This time up the reef and he kept going.  Fine with me.  Marissa is hovering behind me now.  Heh, heh - finally got her attention!  :)  With two sharks still in front of us, I started edging off the wall and up onto the reef with my wife to my rear.  About that time, a pharmacist from FL who had a video camera came charging up on the unsuspecting sharks and they scattered.  It was kind of funny to see them flee from him.  Must have been camera shy...

On our way back to the boat - on top of the reef wall, we had another small whitetip reef shark cruise by in front of us.  Like the first one we had seen that day, he seemed to have a destination in mind and hurried on his way.  Like people, I prefer sharks who are dedicated to their own business and too busy to mess with mine..."