Rare Thresher Shark Sighting in Tepekong
Interns Journal by Frederik.
As a part of our Divemaster Course, all candidates take a turn at guiding a dive in interns’ dive trips. My turn was on February 14th for our second dive at Padang Bai, at a special dive site called Tepekong.
This particular dive site is where we have a great chance to see sharks – you can find White Tip Reef sharks sleeping or swimming around. Needless to say, we were doing our Shark AWARE Specialty Course with Niels, Blue Season’s Marine Biologist and Instructor. We swam to the first location and immediately we found three White Tip Reef Sharks under a big rock overhang!
After a couple of minutes we continued to swim along the reef towards the second best spot to find sharks. On the way we saw three turtles and a big trigger fish. Padang Bai is generally a great dive area where you can see the huge variety of marine life here in Bali waters.
As soon as we came to the second spot, Instructor Wayan pointed to one direction and there it was, a Thresher Shark! It was so beautiful – we were at 17m deep and it was swimming below us at 25-30m. We think it was about 2m long. First it came gliding through the water from our left and swam away to our right. A minute later it came back from our right and disappeared to our left. After about 2-3 minutes I spotted it one last time…
All I can say is that this dive was just amazing! It was my first sighting of Reef and Thresher Sharks; they are really fantastic looking creatures that move so gracefully in their surroundings. Experiencing the dive and meeting the sharks for the first time were truly something for me and why I will always remember diving in Tepekong, Bali.
