Over the past few years I have done quite a lot of dives at Magic Point, the Grey Nurse Shark aggregation site near Maroubra Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs, as part of a project to identify specific sharks by photographing their spot pattern.
I was allowed to get in the cave with them which allowed me to get really close...
I subsequently put together a fairly comprehensive article on the Grey Nurse for the Australian magazine SportDiving, documenting how they were hunted to the point that they are now officially an endangered species and some of the conservation efforts being made to turn the situation around.
Here is the LINK to page 1/3 on my site (www.indopacificimages.com) which explains all this plus provides the link to download the article.
Don
Thanks for sharing!
I also subscribe to Sports Diving mag, nice to see more of the photos not included in the mag, especially the ones inside the cave...
Nice article Jon. And very timely for me as i just did my first dive with Grey Nurses at Julians Rocks on the weekend. I think a new shark addiction has just began...such amazing creatures! I hope they can stay around for many generations to come to dive with. Here's my very first Grey Nurse pic, and i hope there lots more to come in the future.
Peter
Thanks for the comments - greatly appreciated!
I had a very interesting discussion with Phil Bowman yesterday - he is the guy who first came up with the concept that the Grey Nurse's spot pattern is unique and could be used to identify individual sharks. He also developed and convinced PADI to have the Shark Diver Speciality Course.
He has retired from instructing now, but had a lot of really interesting stories that I will try and write up as an article on my site.
Don
Why "nurse" shark, since the genus is (probably) Carcharias and not Ginglymostoma?
That is not the snout of a nurse shark!!
Tim
It's the Aussie non-scientific name for Carcharias taurus....
