Tiger Beach / Dolphins - Tips and Recommendations?

Hello all:

Looking at doing the Shear Water Jim Abernathy boat to do the Tiger Beach and Dolphin itinerary This will be my wife and I's first time doing this trip, and was wondering if there was any recommendations people had, for both the Sharks and the Dolphins portion of the trip?

One question, my wife had...was for the Dolphins. Do people normal take strobes? Or does this cause too much drag for snorkeling?

My wife and I are looking into going on the May 27th sailing. This sailing was originally for their Oceanic White Tip trip, but they didn't get any interest, so they switched over to the classic Sharks and Dolphins Itinerary. If anyone is interested, this might be a good opportunity for a last minute, Memorial week trip, and not have the boat completely full. However, we are currently the only 2 people booked. And need a total of 6. So 4 more people need to join on. They said they would cancel the trip if they don't have that by April 27th.

Thanks in advance.

Dustin

I came back from a Shark / Dolphin trip with Dolphin Dreams a few weeks ago. We were there mostly for the sharks, but did one session with the dolphins. For that, its no strobes. It does indeed create drag, and to get as close to them as possible, you want to be as "active" and playful as possible. You want to swim down, spin around, swim as fast as possible and basically be "fun" for the dolphin to be around. This combined with the fact that you do this while snorkeling and over sandy bottoms not deeper then 30 feet, means you dont use the strobes. I used a smaller dome, to reduce the drag even more. Lots of fun, but super hard work, compared to the "sit on the bottom and be as still as possible" approach you do with the sharks.

One last tip. We had 23-24deg C in the water, and even with hoodie and 3-4-5mm wetsuit, I was freezing a lot. You dont swim around as you would on a normal dive, so bring extra insulating stuff if you have. The shark dives are usually very shallow (tiger beach is 20feet deep where we were) so 100 minutes dive where common, and you use more air while cold.

/Björn

No strobes or scuba for dolphins.

SCUBA and strobes for sharks. Try to minimize any white gear/clothing.