Great Hammerhead Shark Safari 2024 Trip Report
Day 1:
Day 2
Our first day underwater with Great Hammerhead Sharks was epic. The wind was howling in the morning so we had to wait until noon before it was possible to head out to our hammer spot, but within minutes of arriving, the first great hammerhead showed up, quickly followed by three more. Not to mention, more nurse sharks than anyone could count.
The hammers this season seem especially keen to engage with the divers, which means lots of fantastic photo opportunities!
Day 3 Hammerheads and Tiger Sharks
Another great morning with hammerheads. As well as five different hammerheads, Bimini’s two resident tiger sharks showed up today. The larger of the two is around 3.5m long. Her ‘small’ companion is only around 2.5m, but underwater they both look pretty big!
Reef Shark Feed at Triangle Rocks
After our hammerhead/tiger shark dives, we pulled anchor and motored over to Triange Rocks to dive with Caribbean Reef Sharks. Reefies are the most common species that divers see in the Bahamas, but it was nice to see so many heathy looking sharks swimming over the reef.
Day 4 – Stingrays!
We knew today would be our best weather window for reaching distant dive sites, so we got an early start and motored southward to Gun Cay where there is a large population of habituated southern stingrays that are very partial to free squid.
Gun Cay is also the best spot around Bimini to see tiny blacknose sharks; a species that divers rarely get to see in other Caribbean locations. They are quite shy, so photography is challenging but it’s fun to watch them darting around in the distance.
More Hammerheads, then north to the dolphin grounds!
Although I try to include as many shark species as possible on our shark safaris, our guests primarily come to Bimini to see great hammerheads so we make sure they get hammers everyday. When we returned from Gun Cay, we dropped anchor at our hammer spot for a couple of hours so that everyone could get their daily hammerhead fix. Then, we motored north for about an hour to reach the dolphin grounds, which cover quite a large area.
Once there, it did not take us long to find a friendly pod that were crater feeding in the sand. Bottlenose dolphins can be a bit aloof, but these ones were surprisingly friendly. Whenever they surfaced they would swim over and run rings around us – great fun, but exhausting too!
Day 5
We started our final day with a shark feed on a 60ft deep wreck called the M/V Sherice M; a mail boat that caught fire and was eventually sunk as an artificial reef.
The feed attracted about a dozen nurse sharks and a large bull shark, but the bull was extremely timid and did not come close enough for me to photograph it in front of the wreck.
Hammer Time
We finished our trip with more hammerheads. The two tigers also returned and eventually dominated the feed. As always, there were lots of nurse sharks lounging all over the sand. It was a good end to a very successful trip.
Another great trip to Bimini
This really was a great trip. Not only did we find everything we were hoping to see, we also had long encounters with every species and never waited more than a few minutes for the sharks to arrive.
We’ll be back in Bimini for another Great Hammerhead Shark Diving Safari in February 2025. I’m sure it will be another fantastic trip. I hope you can join me!
