Gillls, Fins & Tails
i couple of weeks ago I went for dinner with a mate and somewhere between my salmon steak and his pasta we started talking about our underwater exploits. The deep water kind - NOT the deep throat kind!
The discussion was going swimmingly (pun intended), right up till we started talking about sharks. Yes, the largest carnivore on the planet. About 500 kilos of pure muscle and with 300 odd teeth that grow constantly, these aerodynamically shaped killers strike awe & fear into our hearts and overactive imaginations… Personally I think sharks are fascinating creatures. I have a healthy respect for them but when I’m underwater, I do not go out of my way looking for them!
Anyway, my mate was talking about the time he went diving off the coast of Sabah in Borneo, looking for hammerhead sharks. Now these sharks are not exactly the friendliest things on the planet- they’re extremely territorial, perpetually pissed off, they have been known to munch on humans AND they swim in schools. So by default if you go looking for one hammerhead, you’re going to find its brothers and sisters as well! Now call me chicken but I have a very healthy fear for an (or in the case of hammerheads, 50 or so) animal(s) that has a very high probability of making me its afternoon snack. I’ll explain my reasons later but to keep from digressing, on with my mate’s story. He was diving with 5 other people, all hoping to catch a glimpse of these awesome underwater meat eaters and he was swimming at the back of the pack, lagging behind. Suddenly as he closed in on the group he realises that they have all stopped swimming and are all pointing and waving at him.
Now usually when people wave and point at you the first thing most people do is to check their person for something amiss; which is exactly what my mate did. The pointing and the waving then continued at more frantic speeds and FINALLY my mate who was probably high on oxygen got what they were trying to tell him – that there was a hammerhead swimming right behind him! He spun around just in time to see its tail before it swam away into the blue yonder… Of course he had to be the only one that didn’t get to see any sharks and he was understandably, suitably upset. To make matters worse the others took the piss out of him the whole trip back. Not the funnest of dives, he tells me.
My story with sharks is a little more ‘personal’ in the very up close sort of way… I was in the islands with a girlfriend and we sailed a two man catamaran out to the open water. We (stupidly) sailed so far out that we actually lost sight of the shoreline. At that point I was ready to turn back – without my scuba gear and a very large knife I’m a little nervous about open water like that. But my dear mate (she’s the person who organises the Fear Factor reality TV series so you can only imagine what kind of girl she is) is quite fearless and she decides that it’s hot and the water’s cold and very inviting, lets go take a dip! I’m obviously a little freaked out but not wanting to be a chook, I idiotically agreed. So with a splash we are swimming around the boat when suddenly BUMP! Right against my right leg, just above my knee! Imagine getting hit by the bumper of a mid to large sized car going about at 20-25kmph. The bruising is approximately from hip to about mid-calf and it lasts for about 3 WEEKS. Anyway.
So obviously I was boggling WTF?!? I yell out to her that something VERY LARGE, leathery and very rough just rammed into my leg. The next thing we both see circling the boat is a MASSIVE, and when I say MASSIVE I mean about 2 metres long, torpedo shaped creature with a very scarred dorsal fin crest the surface. If your marine biology is up to scratch you would know that the ONLY two living creatures on this PLANET that is shaped like a torpedo with a dorsal fin attached is a dolphin… Or a shark.
Tell me YOU won’t freak out right there and then if you were in our places – I’ll show you a liar.
The shark (I know its not a dolphin because sharks, like all cold blooded fish wave their tails from left to right; dolphins and other mammals wave their tails up to down and this bugger was DEFINITELY waving its tail from left to right) then circled the boat with barely a ripple and then BUMP! My mate was the next to get hit. There and then, all her courage evaporated and she started to scramble back onto the boat. Trying to get back onto a catamaran without help and when you’re panicking is no small task. There was a whole lot of splashing involved and that’s bad because sharks like splashing because it indicates an injured fishy and that in turn indicates a Happy Meal.
As calmly as I could, I told my mate to stop splashing about and just as she clambered back onto the boat BUMP! She was tipped back into the water as the shark charged into the boat. We watched in horror as the carnivore circled around us again. At this point I honestly thought that we were going to be eaten. I saw the torpedo shaped shadow coast towards me and then (I was expecting the CHOMP) BUMP! Again it knocked into me! The creature then surfaced again, disappeared and BUMP! My mate was hit!
The shark circled us several times after that without (thankfully) confrontation and then, deciding that is was bored of us or something, it swam away. Just like that. And of course, without further ado we both dragged our very bruised and scratched up posteriors onto the boat and sped back to shore! I never examined the boat to see if it the shark took a taste sample of ‘us’ but till this very day I thank my lucky stars that neither my mate nor I got to feel 300+ teeth making our body parts part with our bodies. Neither do I sail a catamaran out on open water anymore!
So now, the only close encounters I have with sharks are mostly done with crabmeat, some vinegar and a spot of brandy. YUMMY!
