Shark Diving

So last Sunday was shark diving time. The short version of the whole story: just awesome!

The long version: I booked the two shark dives as part of the Shark Awareness Specialty Course from Stuart Cove’s. The simple goal of this course is to introduce you to the shark. Through an academic program presented by a multi-media presentation, you will learn how to identify different types of sharks, understand some of their behaviors, and learn why this animal is so important to the overall oceanic ecosystems. The course will also teach you proper behavior for diving with sharks and will finish with you completing two shark dives - a free swim with sharks and a shark feeding dive. Upon completion of the academic and open water sections you will be awarded a specialty certification.

Stuart Cove's is a large dive organizer in New Providence, Nassau, Bahamas. With four 48-foot vessels, and seven 40-foot vessels, they have 40 instructors and guides, not including support staff. Prices are reasonable, especially if you book in advance ($95 for two-tank, or $150 for the shark dives). They will pick you up at major hotels and resorts on buses with jump seats in the aisles, and little place for dive gear, other than the isles, or in one of the seats. But the bus was almost on-time, and since I am currently on island time this was just perfect.

The boats are large, and can accommodate up to 30 divers or so. When I went, we only had 7 divers for the shark dives, so plenty of space. The dive site was only about 10 minutes from their harbor, so considering the rough sea that day this was perfect for people who don’t like to do the rollercoaster experience on boats. I am lucky, and have never been sea sick, but it is never fun to watch other people pug their guts out on and/or over board.

I used Stuart Cove's gear only, since I left all my stuff at home. Packing for a three week business trip did not include my diving gear. The fins I had were slip on fins. I am used to my own fins and the rental fins were not adjustable and since my right foot is smaller then my left, I lost a fin when I jumped in for the first dive. The rest of the rental gear was in top condition, even my wetsuit fitted pretty decent, just wished it was a little thicker. More to that later… You will have to setup your own equipment on board. But the dive guides, crew and captains were helpful, friendly and patient with those who needed a bit of assistance.

Arriving at the dive site offered already an amazing view. A huge turtle was swimming nearby the boat, and under water you could see the dark shadows of 9 feet Caribbean Reef sharks gliding though the water.

The briefings were very informative and professional, but funny at the same time. Especially the briefing from Neil before the shark feeding dive made me laugh a lot. How certain positions will make sharks swimming through your legs and hit you in the nuts with their fin, or how trying to touch one shark will result in a raging envy of the other sharks made me smile. (Of course the real reason is that sticking out your arms will let the sharks think you will feed them, and chances are they will bite your hand.)

First dive was a "free swim" with the sharks on a magnificent wall called Shark Wall. We saw about 10 sharks, and they will follow you throughout the dive because we were close to the feeding site and they know the dinner bell will ring soon. However, no bait was exposed on this dive. This kept the sharks curious and creates a very natural encounter for divers.

Second dive was the shark feeding dive. Unlike ordinary dives you will spend this dive kneeling, sitting or laying on the sand bottom. Hence my remark that the wetsuit could have been a little thicker. Because you are not swimming at all, and tide just came up which brought a stream of cold water through the site, it became very cold after a while. But you only notice that before and after the sharks are pushing you around haha.


Divers form a semi-circle in front of the shark feeder who will place a bait box. The feeder utilizes this bait box and a pole spear to control the release of food which influences the sharks behavior. I've seen a few sharks while diving at Sint Maarten, but nothing like this! At the feeding we probably had over thirty sharks circling around, and between us. An awesome experience for any diver!

The Stuart Cove’s crew included 2 divers that do still photos/video for you to purchase. They were helpful explaining the best way to get good shots safely. The amazing pictures on this blog are from them. Thanks girls!

Related Posts

• Stingray City
• Scuba Diving at Sint Maarten 2009

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Stingray City

Since I am working for a few weeks in the Caribbean I have the chance to do some diving at a few of the best spots in the world and interact with some amazing animals that have their home in the deep blue sea.

Tomorrow I am going to dive with sharks as part of the Shark Awareness Specialty Course at Stuart Cove's at the Bahamas. But last weekend I was at Grand Caymans, and had the oppertunity to dive on Sunday at Wildlife Reef and Paegant Reef. Although these were very beautiful, and I had a blast diving them, the most impressive diving experience at the Cayman Islands was on Monday at Stingray City.

Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the North Sound of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Here southern stingrays are found in abundance and people can interact with the animals. The southern stingray, Dasyatis americana, is a stingray of the family Dasyatidae (the Whiptail Stingrays) found in tropical and subtropical waters of the Western Atlantic Ocean from New Jersey to Brazil. It has a flat, diamond-shaped disc, with a mud brown/olive/grey dorsal surface and white underbelly. Female stingrays can grow to a disc width of 150cm.

Southern stingrays are very fascinating animals.  To hide from predators, Southern Stingrays bury themselves under the sand. They flap their fins until the sand is covering everything but their eyes and spiracles. The color of the Southern Stingrays also allows them to blend in with the sand underneath them.

To find prey in the sand they use their extraordinary senses including touch, smell and electrosenses. These rays have amazing adaptations that allow them to fit perfectly in the benthic zone life-style. The barb on its tail is serrated and covered in a venomous mucous; it is used for self defense.

At Stingray City you get the opportunity to swim with these amazing animals. This experience was unbelievable! These stingrays come right up to you looking for food. It’s breathtaking to be surrounded by these animals in their natural habitat because they are so beautiful and so gentle. The only time a southern stingray would intentionally harm you would be if it felt threatened. Besides that, they just want to visit and get the snack you’re holding in your hand.

These rays and their habitat are extremely important and need to be conserved. Please help spread the awareness for this species and its habitat.

Related Posts:

• Scuba Diving at Sint Maarten 2009

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2009 Reflection

Of course, the past is history. But once in a while it’s good to look back, which is what I did during a 4 hour train trip yesterday... But then you need to move on to avoid getting stuck in the past... We’ll be moving on in a number of soon to come blog posts, but first, here are a few things I’m actually proud of from last year:

• Established a new home base in Zurich, Switzerland.
• Had a two month mini-sabbatical in February/March.
  
• Quit my job and started my own company (this++) together with my business partner Georg Breithaupt and we actually found customers that rock and we love working for.
• Did my first skydive.
• Had the opportunity to spend some great times with my parents on separate occasions in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
• Had the opportunity to spend some great times with my little brother on separate occasions in the Caribbean, the USA, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. This was quite unique since we live on different continents for a while now.
• Met a number of new amazing people, got to see a lot of my friends in person, and was able to reconnect with others online.
• Learned to SCUBA dive.
• Sailed a regatta on a former America Cup boat.
  
• Won the "2009 World's Best Presentation Contest" on SlideShare in the category "Technology".
  
• Started learning Bulgarian, and had an amazing time in Sofia, Bulgaria.
• Started running on a regular basis.
• Learned tons of new things about .NET, C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure, MS SQL Server, IIS, and software architecture/development/design in common.
• Wrote my first guest post, which brings me to the fact that ...
  

... it was rather quiet at this blog lately. At one hand because of the amount of work of starting my own company (actually two of them, but more to that in a different post), at the other hand because of I was not sure which direction to go with this blog. I think I figured it out, and will write more about the planned direction of this blog in the next post.

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She is so right it is not even funny ...

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How does Visifire Rendering Works?

Since the release of Visifire 2.0 I am using the toolkit for chart visualization. Mostly within SharePoint (see here and here), but lately also within Windows Azure. I like the simplicity, the looks and the customizability of Visifire. It is challenging to provide this functionality in an easy to use toolkit, but Visifire does an excellent job at it.

The secret of Visifire is of course the underlying set of algorithms that determine the best visualization for a given set of parameters. So even when you provide bare minimum data required for rendering, Visifire renders a nice looking chart which has tooltips, default interactivity like explode in Pie Chart, auto font-color for labels depending on the Chart Background color, auto indexing of DataPoints when XValue is not provided, etc. Though Visifire makes effort to find the best visualization for any given case, its not perfect. Sometimes you just want to make it a little different.

Sunil Urs wrote a great post at the Visifire blog that explains the default rendering behavior of Visifire and how you can adapt it to your needs. A must read when you use, or plan to use, Visifire.

Related Posts:

• How To Create Drilldown Silverlight Graphs in SharePoint with Visifire
• How To Add Awesome Graphs To SharePoint with Silverlight

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The Intersection of People and Process

Saturday I wrote a guest post on the blog "The Intersection of People and Process" which is owned by my buddy Jeff Shuey. It is Jeff's place to talk about Cloud Computing, Workflow, BPM, ECM, CRM, UC and other work related stuff, but also about other things that interest him - mountain biking, wake surfing, and anything else that strikes a chord.

Jeff spent the better part of the last 16 years working in various aspects of the ECM space. He spent time at Kofax, Microsoft, FileNet, K2, and most recently Captaris (which was acquired by Open Text in Nov 2008). Prior to that he was a Unix VAR running his own company. Follow him on Twitter and/or check his blog. It is definitely worth it!

My guest post is titled "Where is my data?", and is about the the apparently simple question where your data is located within a cloud service. Go check it out, and let me know what you think about the data issue in the cloud computing space.

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You voted, the judges decided, and the winners are ...

As some of you know I participated in the World's Best Presentation Contest 2009 at SlideShare with my presentation "24 Reasons Why Twitter Sucks!".

Yesterday the results were announced at SlideShare, and I won in the category Technology! The complete results you can find here. Dan Roam's Napkins on Healtcare absolutely rocks! No matter if you agree with it's content or not.

Thanks to all the people who voted for me, the people that spread my presentation through social media, and of course the judges Padmasree Warrior, David Armano and Guy Kawasaki. I really appreciate it!

View more documents from Henrico Dolfing.

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