Diving With Tiger Sharks Under Okaloosa Island Fishing Pier With Kinga Phillips ShaneO Emerald Coast

Shane Reynolds here with Kinga Phillips, the Tiger Queen, the first female host of a Shark Week show, which was only two years ago. That's a heavy claim there. Pretty cool, pretty cool. I feel privileged to be able to meet you. Oh, well you know who the real Tiger Kings and the Tiger Queens were today. The what, five, six, seven tigers that we were in the water with? Okay, let's stop the press here and rewind things back to about an hour ago. So it's no big secret that tiger sharks have been showing up to the Okaloosa Island Pier for the last few summers, and they're back again this year. And this morning there's a special group of people gathered here. First we have my friend Shane Reynolds, who's the mastermind behind Color Earth Pro Productions. Next we have Kinga Phillips, who is an actress, journalist, and as Shane said, the first female host of a Shark Week show. And we have our very own Alex, who is the chief resource officer for Okaloosa County. So this trio here has been hired by the county to scuba dive down and collect some data from a transponder at the base of the pier. Of course it just wouldn't be right to not bring cameras and get some video of what's going on down there. I'm going to assist Shane with a camera shot here and then I'm going to try to get some video of my own. We're going to take this here GoPro 360 and tie it to this here string, drop it in the water, and see what we can find. So if you're wondering why these tiger sharks keep coming back here year after year, notice all the dead bait fish on the bottom. This time of year these bait fish get in such tightly packed schools, there's so many of them that there's just not enough oxygen, and some fall dead to the bottom. This is a naturally occurring process called school-induced hypoxia, and these tiger sharks are just cruising along eating these dead bait fish off the bottom. They're well fed, they're happy, and they're not bothering anyone. One other thing I would like to note that these divers were working for the county on a special permit. Diving under the pier is not permissible to the general public. And the dive today was a super success, and I'd like to give a special thanks to Shane, Kinga, and Alex for letting me be a part of it. So if you want to see some tiger sharks, just take a walk out on the Okaloosa Island Fishing Pier. Pretty cool experience, something you're not going to see anywhere else on the Emerald Coast. Thanks for watching the video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, hit the like button, leave a comment if you want, stay stoked, and we'll see you next video.