caribbean reef shark sighting

saw one of these puppies out at the aptly named "shark alley" yesterday!!! i've seen nurse sharks and lemon sharks, but this was my first reef shark sighting. reef sharks are most keen on pretty shallow water - we saw it in about 3 meters of water (about ten feet that is - the majority of our teachers here are from countries that use SI units and have whipped us into shape about using anything but meters as a measure of depth) but apparently they are often found much shallower than that, with their fin poking out of the water in stereotypical thriller-movie fashion.

caribbean reef sharks grow up to be pretty hefty - they can be up to 3 meters (…or 10 feet) long, and the one we saw was quite a hunk of cartilage. we had just completed our estimation-of-fish-sizes-underwater exercise the day before, and so though i'm no expert, i can semi-confidantly say he was around 7 feet long.

nerdy bio time: reef sharks are kinda cool, and are one of the only sharks observed to rest motionless inside underwater caves. they tend to dine on bony fish, but also have a fondness for my favorite creature, spotted eagle rays. i'm a fan of sharks, but i'm not sure how i feel about that. in our research on rays so far, we have sighted two individuals with pretty major scarring, and this guy might be the culprit. elasmobranchs should look out for each other, at least in my opinion. rays are friends, not food.