Hammer Time

If you have MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" on your ipod or if you so please, search for it on YouTube because it will definitely get you as pumped up as I am when thinking about what happened this yesterday. From now on when I hear that song, I will instantly think about the boat ride with this song playing over the radio as everyone in the lab drove out to the magic spot to bait in GREAT HAMMERHEADS. Stocked with the barracudas and grouper carcasses from our fishing escapades the day before (next blog) and wahoo carcasses from a tournament on the north island, we were excited about enticing the hammerheads that frequent Bimini this time of year. After about thirty to forty-five minutes of the staff scraping the carcasses with a knife, shaking frozen chum bags, and squirting menhaden oil into the water with no luck we were getting anxious. At that point I took over for Sean, the lab manager, scraping carcases while he went and speared a couple fresh jacks. After about fifteen minutes scraping the heads of a sixty pound wahoo and thirty pound grouper, both Jim, the assistant lab manager, and I look up at about the same time to see a ten-foot Great Hammerhead rushing to the large amber jack head anchored on the bottom. The adrenaline rush I got at that point rivaled any of my big pitching performances in college. I immediately started screaming HAMMERHEAD, HAMMERHEAD, HAMMERHEAD to everyone on the boat as I had someone give me my camera. While everyone else suited up into their wet suits I just marveled at the size, beauty, and strength of the shark. I was able to spend the most time in the water with it and to top that, I was no more than fifteen feet above it just watching it eat the bait on the bottom. The shark ignored us while it swam in and out of the blue taking passes at the bait on the bottom. If this computer will let me I will edit one of my videos down because the pictures do not do justice to how magnificent this animal truly is. If you ever have the opportunity to get in the water with one of these sharks it will honestly leave you speechless. It was truly an experience I will never forget.