Scuba Dive

This is not a Great White, but he plays one on TV...

Another day, another shark feed.  In scuba diving circles, the Bahamas are pretty well known for their sharks.  Divers commonly see black tips, white tips, grey reef, and nurse sharks on dives.  The only way to pack more of them into a dive is to feed them, which is what several companies have started offering in the Bahamas.  While no shark feed is 100% safe, I chose one with an environmentally conscious reputation and an impeccable safety record.  Better to stack the deck in my favor from the start.

When the dive boat tied up to the mooring ball I was surprised to see how close we were to shore.  Specifically, how close we were to several large hotels.  If the guests only knew what lay in the nearby waves, they would spend their time in the pool.  

The shark feeder (we will call him Sir Fish Head in deference to the chain mail he wore) entered the water and plummeted to the bottom from the weight of his suit.  He walked along the sea floor towards us in slow motion, like a knight in shining armor walking on the moon.  I expected him to stop about thirty feet away from us, but he kept approaching us, closer and closer.  He finally stopped six feet from our diver line. 

Sir Fish Head pulled the first piece of fish out of the thermos and five sharks swooped in to grab it.  They swam so fast I did not see them approach.  They just appeared, grabbed the food, and disappeared, like aquatic magic.  The fish feeder continued to pull bits of fish out, sometimes dangling it on the end of his lance to feed the sharks, sometimes handing larger pieces directly to their waiting jaws.  The sharks began circling closer to us, their shyness replaced by their growing excitement over the fishy snack. 

The sharks were so numerous and so close that I would have come into contact with one had I shifted any body part too much.  The closeness of the sharks unnerved me, but also enthralled.  I could see the detail of their black marble eyes and the electrical sensors on their snouts that looked like enlarged pores.  One shark had a large hook in the side of its mouth, the result of a fisherman’s bait theft gone badly.  Their faces grinned with rows of large teeth, exuding menace even when the sharks’ mouths were closed.

When the food disappeared from the water the sharks disappeared from sight.  The divemaster ushered us back to the boat.  Sir Fish Head stayed behind to distract any remaining sharks in the area, keeping them away from us as we ascended.  I took many photos of the event with my underwater camera, though I had not paid too much attention to the viewfinder in favor of focusing on the real thing in front of me.  When I developed the pictures they were all of parts of sharks: a tail, a head, some fins.  The sharks had been so close that the lens had not captured a single one in its entirety.