The Shark Dive

 

1990

Maybe you’ve seen the videos. It’s one hundred feet down ten miles off the coast of some small island in the Indian Ocean. There are two scuba divers inside a steel cage. Circling the cage is a herd of very large hammerhead sharks in a frenzy trying to get at the bloody t-bone steaks the scuba divers are waving around. You don’t think the steel cage will hold when the thousand pound sharks charge into it twisting and bending the bars. But it does hold and eventually the scuba divers are pulled up to the surface and safety.

My shark dive wasn’t like that.

There was no steel cage.

And no steaks.

Margie and I took up scuba diving in 1990 in preparation for a holiday in the Bahamas.

Unlike most other recreational hobbies an aspiring diver must take lessons and get certified. The accreditation is a half day test to demonstrate you know how to use all the equipment and have an appreciation of how to dive safely. Margie and I did our certification exam in the Bahamas at Stuart Cove’s Dive Centre in Lyford Cay, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world. Many rich Canadians have homes there. E P Taylor, rich and famous for having built Don Mills, had a house there. In 1962 that house was used for negotiations between John F Kennedy and Harold McMillan. 

That's not where we were staying. 

The first dive we did together after getting certified was a tour of underwater wrecks from James Bond movies filmed in the Bahamas. It was slightly dangerous. We had to be careful to not get lost in an escape hatch.

A second dive we did together was to go 100 ft deep down an underwater cliff. The edge of the ocean it was called. One of the great attractions of scuba diving is the coral. There's more to see in a yard of coral than in a mile on land. The cliff wall was full of colorful coral reefs sprouting dozens of different types of vegetation foot by foot. It's often the case with scuba diving that you get so absorbed in the scenery that you have to remember to get out of the water before your air runs out. And if you're down deep you have ascend slowly. More to remember. I've forgotten my Passport more times than I've forgotten to rise to the surface slowly.  

Stuart’s Cove offered a tourist shark dive. It is one of those life affirming adventures that I gravitate to. Earlier in my life I tried sky diving. Choosing to head to India rather than Germany as a back packer was another.

As you already know there were no steel cages or bloody t-bone steaks used on my shark dive. The dive started with a 55 minute ride to the dive site off the coast of the Bahamas. There were five people on the trip. One was the dive master who was in charge. We carried a couple of crates of dried fish to use as bait to attract the sharks.

When we arrived we descended 65 feet to the bottom of the Atlantic at that point. We were going to sit on the bottom while we waited for the sharks to find and play with us.

We learned in our briefing that we'd see Silk sharks varying in length from 10 to 15 feet. I think the biggest fish I had seen previously was 2 to 3 feet so this was going to be more exciting but maybe less colourful.

The hour we spent on the ocean floor had a few exciting moments. At first we were alone. We assumed we were in the right place but while there were lots of fish swimming around us none were sharks. After about five minutes we were discovered by a school of about 10 sharks. I suppose we were a different sort of intruder into their world so they came for a sniff. The only things we had to fear were fear itself and being accidentally bumped by one of the larger sharks. Silk sharks are totally safe. They had no interest in us as food but they were curious and would swim right up to our faces to get a good look.

Then the dive master started the ballet. He would spear a fish from the bait crate and wave it in front of the sharks. They were amazingly fast and agile. Instead of just sauntering around us they would suddenly speed up, turn on a dime and charge the bait before one of the other sharks could get it. It was a five second spurt of aggression which was as beautiful as it was scary. This ballet resulted in the fastest sharks getting more than their fair share of the bait. Ah. Food inequality right there on the ocean floor.

We hung around for about an hour before heading back to civilization.

A money making extra for Stuart’s Cove was to sell videos of the dive. I bought one and have had many pleasurable moments showing it to friends and guests who gave me the best kind of an ‘attaboy’ I could ever want. You can see it here.