The underwater visibility at Namena Island led us to focus on the smaller side of the population.

   

After a few days of learning our way around and seeing no sharks we started to feel like we were operating in a big aquarium.

We were still surprised at every turn by a new fish but it was usually something like this tiny golden damsel fish who lives next to a purple soft coral.

We named her “Lemon Drop” and visited her every day.

 

But this idyllic spot is connected to a large ocean. A few miles away the bottom drops to more than 6,000 ft, and we’ve been impressed by the occasional big oceanic predators like giant trevally and wahoo patrolling past the wall where Lemon Drop lives.

So it wasn’t a complete surprise late this afternoon to see a large white tip looking for an early dinner.  But like all the white-tips we’ve seen, this one was very well behaved and kept to himself.

Soon after there was a blacktip fly-by while K was videoing an anemone.  Then S saw a pig-sized grouper and K went to try and take a picture but he couldn’t concentrate because S was yelling underwater about a new shark.

K thought the shark seemed too small to make trouble and went to look under a ledge for the grouper, but the shark was actually a very sassy grey reef shark.  He took an interest in S and swam directly up to her, not turning away until she poked him soundly on the nose with the blunt plastic end of her trusty sawed-off boat hook, which she always carries with her when snorkling for just such an occasion.  S then made it clear to K that grouper photo time was over and we started swimming back to the boat.  Not wishing to miss out, the pesky barracuda showed up, and at one point K had a great view of his own tasty lemon drop finning at high speed through a bottomless blue ocean with a shark and a barracuda following in her wake.