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Swim with sharks - yay or nay - video inside

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Would you get in the water?

  • Hell yeah that looks awesome!

    Votes: 10 66.7%

  • Nope nope nope nope nope!

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • Total voters
    15
Jeeebus said:
We swam with a LOT of sharks in Bora Bora 16 years ago for the honeymoon. Was kinda crazy. They were throwing fish in to get the sharks closer together and we tourist morons were like "awesome." It was mostly reef sharks. Then a big tiger showed up about 20 ft down and the locals were not happy. Kept a close eye on him.

I have clients that spear fish commercially some 50 miles offshore. I've seen the pics/videos of very aggressive bull sharks wrestling big groupers out of their hands. Supposedly they only get 1 out of 5 to the boat. Not my cup of tea. Get bit 50 miles offshore and chances are you're not making it to a hospital.
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Eaten by sharks is a good obituary, at least.
 
Jeeebus said:
We swam with a LOT of sharks in Bora Bora 16 years ago for the honeymoon. Was kinda crazy. They were throwing fish in to get the sharks closer together and we tourist morons were like "awesome." It was mostly reef sharks. Then a big tiger showed up about 20 ft down and the locals were not happy. Kept a close eye on him.

I have clients that spear fish commercially some 50 miles offshore. I've seen the pics/videos of very aggressive bull sharks wrestling big groupers out of their hands. Supposedly they only get 1 out of 5 to the boat. Not my cup of tea. Get bit 50 miles offshore and chances are you're not making it to a hospital.
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Well fuck those people for going after goliath groupers anyways. You're not supposed to be catching them anyways.
 
purbeast0 said:
Well fuck those people for going after goliath groupers anyways. You're not supposed to be catching them anyways.
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Who said anything about goliath groupers? There are plenty of 50lb - 100lb groupers that are not goliaths. As I mentioned, they are doing this commercially - given that it's illegal to keep a goliath, they're not spearing one just for the opportunity of having a shark charge at them.
 
Yep but TBH I'd do the cage diving too so given that, my skydiving etc my risk / reward center might be a bit off normal
 
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I used to skin dive for seafood on Maui. We saw sharks once in a while. A shark did attack a surfer while I was there, bit his leg.
 
Takes a big shark to get me out of the water. Only happened a few times in decades of surfing. We are not on the menu. And I try not to surf where fishing is happening. Get surf casters sometimes, but what're ya gonna do? Rest of the time? I always tell whomever asks, I'll Tarzan roll it; Old Johnny Weissmuller style. 😀
 
That's awesome! I would have no problem swimming there. My only close experience was swimming with whale sharks. Those suckers are huge. But they're not really sharks. If I visit Philippines this year, I plan to swim with whale sharks again.

How was Belize? Worth visiting?
 
ponyo said:
That's awesome! I would have no problem swimming there. My only close experience was swimming with whale sharks. Those suckers are huge. But they're not really sharks. If I visit Philippines this year, I plan to swim with whale sharks again.

How was Belize? Worth visiting?
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Yep will definitely be back. I loved it. The one thing I didn't realize though is that there aren't really many beaches (at least on Ambergris Caye). It is more like the Florida Keys in that you have to get out on a boat to get into the super nice water. The resort we stayed at though had a private beach club where they took you on a 12-15 minute boat ride to this SUPER nice beach. And then we drove about 50 minutes (10 miles in a golf cart) to this place called Secret Beach which was also really nice but it is more like restaurants/bars that are on a super nice beach with tables in the water too.

Where we stayed at wasn't along the ocean front of the east coast however there were a bunch of hotels there. They had a sargassum problem right now though and all those places right on the beach did not have nice beaches. Sometimes driving by em you could smell the rotting seaweed. Then at some of them there weren't rotten seaweed but the first like 50+ feet of the beach was like orange colored due to the seaweed. Needless to say I'm super glad we stayed where we did.

The place can also be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be. At the beach club burgers were like $18 and mixed cocktails like $10. But then we ate at local places for lunch where we had papusas, flautas, empenadas, 2 drinks each, and it was $32. Then we also went to this local bar that was recommended for us where rum and cokes were $2. So it would be very easy to get by on a budget too but you can also go to nice places and eat.

I also loved that everyone drives golf carts. The only cars are really taxies or service vehicles, which aren't much. The people there are also super nice. Everywhere we went the people were as nice as could be. We did not run into one person that was not friendly to us and it wasn't the fake kind of nice as I've experienced that a lot in other places too. It "felt" like you were in central America too which was nice.

This was one of my favorite dining experiences we had. If you want, you can pick your own food from the fresh seafood and they prepare it how you want it. We got an octopus, 4 stone crab legs, and 8 shrimp.


s8PuEy9.jpg


This is Secret Beach that I was talking about. It's kind of cool driving there because you are going in the middle of nowhere and you can tell that the roads are fairly new and man made over this area that roads were not before. They are also very bumpy and basically gravel/dirt.


And this was the private beach club I was talking about. We rented one of the day beds which were like $20 for 2 hours but we hung out for like 3 or 4 cause the next people didn't come to claim it. There is also a nice shoreline here to sit and chill on.

inFqfMH.jpg
 
Nice! Looks like my type of place. If and when Belize gets rid of all covid restrictions, I will consider visiting. It's only 3 hours short direct flight for me. Sargassum problem is unfortunate but it seems you can't really escape that in the summer in the Caribbean side. Which is unfortunate as it seems sargassum problem is getting worse every year as the ocean water heats up.
 
ponyo said:
Nice! Looks like my type of place. If and when Belize gets rid of all covid restrictions, I will consider visiting. It's only 3 hours short direct flight for me. Sargassum problem is unfortunate but it seems you can't really escape that in the summer in the Caribbean side. Which is unfortunate as it seems sargassum problem is getting worse every year as the ocean water heats up.
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There were basically no covid restrictions. Well I did have to show my vaccine card but that was it. No test or anything.

And there is basically no mask wearing over there at all. The only people who really wore them were employees at restaurants and some of the ones in our hotel. I saw some signs for mask wearing at some little markets but no one wore them including employees. At our hotel they said masks were optional except on the boat to the private beach club but I literally saw nobody wearing a mask on any of the boat trips. We were pretty much outside the entire time though and restaurants were primarily either outside or open air, aside from that one in the video above. That was the only "inside" restaurant we went to.

We did have to take a test to get back into the USA though.
 
purbeast0 said:
There were basically no covid restrictions. Well I did have to show my vaccine card but that was it. No test or anything.

And there is basically no mask wearing over there at all. The only people who really wore them were employees at restaurants and some of the ones in our hotel. I saw some signs for mask wearing at some little markets but no one wore them including employees. At our hotel they said masks were optional except on the boat to the private beach club but I literally saw nobody wearing a mask on any of the boat trips. We were pretty much outside the entire time though and restaurants were primarily either outside or open air, aside from that one in the video above. That was the only "inside" restaurant we went to.

We did have to take a test to get back into the USA though.
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They relaxed most but they still require some stuff from what I've read. You have to show your vaccination records, purchase mandatory covid insurance for Belize, and stay at designated hotels/lodging approved by the Belize government for tourism. Contrast that to Costa Rica and Aruba which got rid of all covid restrictions and gone back to 2019 precovid era of travel, Belize is still lagging. Philippines also got rid of all covid restrictions and gone back to 2019 precovid rules which is one of the reasons why I'm considering traveling there.
 
ponyo said:
That's awesome! I would have no problem swimming there. My only close experience was swimming with whale sharks. Those suckers are huge. But they're not really sharks. If I visit Philippines this year, I plan to swim with whale sharks again.
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You mean not really whales? They are really sharks, just one of the few filter feeder ones.
 
ponyo said:
They relaxed most but they still require some stuff from what I've read. You have to show your vaccination records, purchase mandatory covid insurance for Belize, and stay at designated hotels/lodging approved by the Belize government for tourism. Contrast that to Costa Rica and Aruba which got rid of all covid restrictions and gone back to 2019 precovid era of travel, Belize is still lagging. Philippines also got rid of all covid restrictions and gone back to 2019 precovid rules which is one of the reasons why I'm considering traveling there.
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Oh yeah forgot about the insurance. Was like $15 I think. I don't know about the last part though I hadn't heard of that but maybe the hotel we picked was just part of that group.

EDIT:

And diving with whale sharks is definitely on my bucket list. That would be incredible.
 
VashHT said:
You mean not really whales? They are really sharks, just one of the few filter feeder ones.
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Basking sharks are also pretty cool too although not as big... BOTH are listed as "endangered".

😕

Also BOTH are true sharks which are fish not whales.

 
purbeast0 said:
Oh yeah forgot about the insurance. Was like $15 I think. I don't know about the last part though I hadn't heard of that but maybe the hotel we picked was just part of that group.

EDIT:

And diving with whale sharks is definitely on my bucket list. That would be incredible.
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Good to know about the insurance cost. Super reasonable. I think most hotels are probably in the tourist approval list. Probably affects AirBnB rentals more than hotels.

I did the whale shark thing in Cancun. But I also know they do it in the Philippines.
 
ponyo said:
Good to know about the insurance cost. Super reasonable. I think most hotels are probably in the tourist approval list. Probably affects AirBnB rentals more than hotels.

I did the whale shark thing in Cancun. But I also know they do it in the Philippines.
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Yeah I know it's a seasonal thing too and is only possible for a few months out of the year depending where you are at.
 
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