We had two nice beach days due to the west wind making the ocean quite calm. We spent both afternoons at Bathtub Reef Beach, which is named for the deep water that was formed between a reef and the shoreline. The first day, the 82 degree water was quite clear and we lounged in the swells. We also took a walk up the beach and watched a fisherman reel in a 5 ft. nurse shark. We don't worry about nurse sharks approaching us in the ocean, because they are bottom dwellers and more like big catfish. On the second day, we noticed that there was a red flag up at the lifeguard station, indicating use extreme caution (2 red flags means no swimming allowed). Dave stopped to ask the lifeguard why and he said that there had been sharks feeding on schools of baitfish that had been passing by the area. When they are sighted, he said he puts up the two red flags, blows his whistle, and everyone has to get out of the water until they pass on through. His good advice was if you see the bait fish that swarm in balls, stay away! Sooooo... as we were sitting on the beach and getting ready to enter the water, which that day was a bit murkier, the lifeguards started blowing their whistles and put up the two red flags. Everyone (which really wasn't a lot of people at this time of year) stood there on shore looking for the sharks. That's when we started seeing big splashes and sharks were jumping out of the water! We were sitting close to the lifeguard tower since Dave wanted to make sure he heard the whistle should sharks be sighted. The lifeguard told him if he didn't hear the whistle he would blow an airhorn, and if that didn't get him out of the water, he would personally go get him. Every time a shark flew out of the water doing barrel rolls, we turned to the lifeguard and mouthed, "did you see that?" and each time he patiently shook his head yes. It was almost an hour before the all clear was given and we went swimming briefly to cool off (air temp was 88 degrees!). Awhile later as we were air drying off, the same lifeguard we had talked to earlier, came over on his ATV to talk to us. He was so informative and told us that those were spinner sharks, which I had never heard of or seen before, so it was very interesting. We had a great chat and we all agreed that shark bites are mainly a case of mistaken identity, especially in poor water visibility. He was really glad we were so interested in the area, beach, and ocean and we shared a lot of local knowledge.
Earlier in the day, we had a much calmer encounter, this time with two manatees at the Ft. Pierce inlet. We had walked out on the fishing jetty and they were actually out in the ocean. First I thought the one was a rock in the sand, but it came up for a breath of air. After Dave took this photo, a second one surfaced and the two eventually got together and greeted each other, nose to nose. There were schools of fish around the manatees, so I guess no one told THEM to stay away from the bait balls. 😉
We never know what we will see when we least expect it, making this a great start to the winter season!
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