Three miles off O‘ahu’s North Shore sits a three-hundred foot drop off, a natural upwelling of nutrients drawing schools of Galapagos and sandbar sharks. Summer begins a period of less rain and more daylight on the islands, and it also starts the slow trickle of tiger sharks, sometimes twice the size of the other species, coming closer and closer in to mate and lay their pups. By fall, the social dynamic between all of these species changes, as tiger sharks reclaim their position as dominant.

Mariah Meyer, a safety diver, started with One Ocean in February of 2022. She’s seen this dominance shift in our dive site through multiple seasons now, so we sat and talked all about tiger season—why it exists, what changes, and why it matters.

SF: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of tiger season?

MM: F*** yeah. I get so excited for the big girls to come around. So excited.

SF: What are some of the ways your job changes?

MM: We are always aware in the water, like always super aware, but you have to be extra on your toes, and you really pay attention to shark behavior. When you see the sharks, especially the Galapagos sharks, leave, you know “Ok, there’s somebody in the area,” and you can feel the tiger vibes. It sounds like I’m making it up, but you gain this sixth sense of knowing and feeling and understanding where they are. There is totally an energy shift.

SF: How does interacting with guests change?

MM: You have to let them know the rules a little bit better. Things have to be stricter. Tiger sharks are not sharks to mess around with. Yeah, they are beautiful, amazing, apex predators. They’re not cold-blooded killers, but they’re not puppies either. There needs to be a level of respect that everyone needs to have when we enter the water.

SF: How does interacting with sharks change?

MM: The Galapagos do tend to get shier when we have tiger sharks around. It’s normal, they’re smaller. During my first tiger season I was like, “What is going on?” But now that I’ve been through a whole one before I’m like, “I see what’s going on. I know why they’re doing this. I know why they’re doing that. Ok, I know even if we tried to do an engine start they wouldn’t come up because they know that something’s around.” You totally understand the whole conversation that the sharks are having better.

SF: What’s something that someone wouldn’t expect when a tiger shark comes around?

MM: How much they love them. Everyone is so scared, you know? Because tiger sharks are painted to be this big, ferocious predator, but they’re honestly kind of derpy. Really adorable. They have these cute little faces, you know? I love them so much, and [guests] see them and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that was the coolest thing ever,” and I’m like “Yeah, you just swam with a sixteen-foot tiger shark. Not many people can say they did that.” It’s just a really magical experience. Everyone is so stoked.

SF: One of the things that I didn’t think about before is when there are tiger sharks in the area, sometimes you don’t see them, but all the other sharks know they’re there, so some days in the middle of tiger shark season there’s a greater chance of not seeing any sharks.

MM: Usually we will see one or two, but they will be kind of shy because the other sharks know. They have their lateral line, they have all their hearing senses and all these ways that they know, whereas we just know from their behavior that there’s a tiger shark around.

Photo by Paul Johnson @paulphinphotography

SF: Tiger sharks come shallower to lay their pups and that’s why we see more of them, right? I’ve also read there may be some correlation with the humpback whale migration season. It’s almost exactly opposite of when the whales are here, so while they prey on calves perhaps they hide from the adults.

MM: Scientists time it with pupping season and mating season, where [tiger sharks] hang around here or they go to the northern Hawaiian Islands or they vibe through the Hawaiian Islands, but there are also tiger sharks that are residents of different islands. Big Island has some tiger sharks that are residents specifically of Big Island. I’m not sure which tiger sharks are specific residents of O‘ahu. I’m sure if you had long term—I’m talking five-to-ten-year term—data, you could figure out which ones are residents of O‘ahu. But there has also been a ton of research about another type of shark that goes on a two-year migration cycle, where they don’t go to the northern Hawaiian Islands every year, or they go up and around and then they go here, and then they go here. It’s not that we are going to see this one every year. We might see them every two years.

There’s not a ton of data on tracking large sharks in general because to track a shark you basically need two types of tags, a satellite tag or an acoustic tag. An acoustic tag works like a cellphone to a cellphone tower, and basically the cellphone towers in the water are these acoustic receivers, but they have a range of maybe 500 yards max, so for that acoustic tag you need to have receivers in the water, and I don’t think anyone is going to be putting receivers in the water all the way up to the northern Hawaiian Islands. That’s super super expensive. They do it with white sharks in California. The satellite tag, which goes on the dorsal fin and transmits a signal to the satellite every time the dorsal fin pops out of the water. Obviously you can’t do it under water, and how often do sharks come up to the surface? They don’t need to breathe, so there isn’t a lot of data on them because it’s really hard to collect that data.

SF: Can you describe a recent interaction with a tiger shark or one that stands out in your mind?

MM: This was maybe two or three weeks ago. I was out on a charter one day, and we had three different tiger sharks around. I believe it was Miso, Luana, and Nikki, and it was so awesome seeing all the different girls interact, because obviously Nikki is huge. She’s the biggest. Luana is pretty big too. She’s like fifteen-sixteen feet. Miso is like ten to eleven-twelvish feet, so she’s definitely a smaller female. She’s a young adult, so she’s spunky. She’s feisty, so while these bigger girls are trying to push Miso out because she’s a smaller shark, she is holding her own with the bigger girls, and it’s really really cool to see how not just the size of tiger sharks can determine their dominance, but their personality too.

SF: It's more complicated than just how big they are.

MM: Yeah. Kilauea, my tiger shark, she’s so shy. She’s like, “Nope.” She does not like confrontation. Whereas Miso is like, “Nah, I am here. This is my space.” She does not care, which I think is so cute.