It was Clinton’s birthday today, and as you can tell from his birthday cake (made by first mate Broughton at midnight last night, so it would be a surprise) he is interested in sharks.
Birthday boy: Clinton with his bespoke shark-themed cake and card
We’ve only seen a couple of sharks here at Macauley, but up at Raoul the sharks were abundant and very obvious.
Galapagos sharks are very widespread in the tropics and subtropics © M Francis
We only saw Galapagos sharks, which are very widespread in the tropics and subtropics. We saw ones as small as 90 centimetres or so, and others that were over one and half metres. On any fish collecting dive we could be sure to attract the attention of about half a dozen sharks, which were fearless and curious – just like the spotted black grouper – and would swim within a couple of metres of us (but not usually any closer).
It was clear that in the shark world size matters – little sharks always gave way to big sharks, and if they didn’t, then they were told to in no uncertain terms!
Entourage: the Galapagos sharks are often accompanied by an entourage of small fish © M Francis
What I really enjoyed was that the sharks were often accompanied by an entourage of small fish swimming around with them. On several occasions we saw sharks swimming around with one little fish swimming just in front of their nose, and another time we saw a fish slip-streaming around underneath the belly of the shark (probably the safest place to be!).
