As a child I had a fascination with – and what I told myself was a healthy fear of – sharks. Perhaps years of working on Wall Street prepared me for this day. From Spring 2022.
The ride out to the mooring ball could not have been long enough. Anything to delay to inevitable – that we were going to swim with sharks today. Karl and I sat up front, him holding my hand, giving it a light squeeze every now and then, trying to infuse his good vibes and excitement for the dive. Our divemaster eased the throttle forward, heading straight out to sea. I was glad he could not see my face, which didn’t have the look of someone who gladly pays to swim with man-eating creatures.
When we arrived at the mooring ball, our welcoming committee was a throng of grey triangular dorsal fins, zipping across the water. We tied up to the mooring and I started putting on my dive gear, noticing out of the corner of my eye the fins were moving like chess pieces around the boat. When we were almost ready, Karl, ever the truth teller, mentioned I had a small fear of sharks. The divemaster looked at him and then at me, wide-eyed and silent. But Bahamians always have an answer – either via a story or a song – and he responded, “I don’t love them either, but they are like the police.” Karl and I, now intrigued, leaned in. He said that when we descended, to think about the sharks as officials monitoring the reef, rather than as thugs ready to steal a leg. Their job was to observe the situation, and if needed (this was the scary part), act. “If you see their fins suddenly go in (akin to how you go down a water slide with limbs towards your torso to improve aerodynamics) – that’s when they are ready to attack.” With this helpful guidance (and slightly scary visualization) there was nothing more to do but get in the water.
There are a few ways of entering a scuba dive. One option is to sit on your bottom, on the edge of the boat, with your back towards the water and feet inside the boat. You then somersault backwards into the water, using the weight of the tank to propel you, and end right side up (as long as your life vest is inflated). This is always a little scary, even without the imminent chance of flipping back into some hungry shark’s mouth (in which case I fervently hoped Karl would receive a refund). I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, allowing the momentum of the tank to ease me away from the safety of the boat and into the deep blue water.
The scene below was spectacular. The mooring was almost right on top of a circular coral reef, filled with fish darting in and out. Mesmerized by this (and forgetting about sharks for a moment) I gawked as we swam towards the front of the boat, then slowly descended the mooring line, easing our way down 50 feet to acclimate our ears. True to the divemaster’s words, the sharks were eyeing what these three large black neoprene-limbed beings were doing, but with a curious rather than nefarious intent. Some had followed us from the reef over to where the mooring line was connected to the sea floor, expanding their patrol radius to include us. The divemaster rapped softly on his tank and I looked over to see a shark hovering about a foot from Karl’s head. In that moment I could have easily panicked, but instead I simply stared at what I realized was just a really big fish. The shark made no sudden movements and gave no reason for alarm (and importantly, Karl was not worried), which permitted me to study in detail the aspects of this being for which humans have so much (sometimes rightfully so) fear: his grey, dull, sandpaper-y skin, black beady eyes, and a nonchalance that comes from being at the top of the food chain.
Leaving behind the coral reef for later in the dive, we ventured towards a narrow cleft between two coral reefs, similar to a valley between two mountains. We swam down at an angle, gradually increasing our depth, each side of the reef radiating the rainbow palate of swaying grasses, coral in all shapes and sizes, and partially hidden fish within the nooks.
I felt myself settling into the dive, slowly breathing in and breathing out, each inhale a count of five or more, and extending the exhale as long as I could. The heat, noise, and pace of land faded away, as the three of us swam deeper, beyond the reach of the sun’s rays. The tranquility I felt belied the active ecosystem before us. Fish were darting here and there, even the seagrass was dancing to the constant rhythm of the ocean’s current. But here we were (for the most part) silent guests – fortunate sightseers of this mysterious world unfolding before us. All we had to do was notice.
We swam back towards the dive boat and circumnavigated the coral reef, the fish and even the sharks less foreign than they had appeared just an hour ago. The ocean in all its vastness had fully absorbed the anxiety that had preceded this dive. Savoring our last moments underwater, we joined in the perambulation of the reef with all the creatures that had hosted us while we explored their home. And for a few moments longer, I was just one of them, swimming along.
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