A novice diver swam with some of the ocean’s most feared predators—and came away with a new appreciation for them.
At the time I wasn’t sure if the shark loved me like a pal or loved me like a pizza. I was like an overzealous ninja with the three-foot pole I carried to keep the sharks at arm’s length.
The way Debbie described it later, this was just “Sophie” being curious and friendly. “She loooved you,” Debbie said again and again, because of all the attention Sophie paid me during the dive (really, she was all over me). At the time I wasn’t sure if Sophie loved me like a pal or loved me like a pizza, and I was like an overzealous ninja with the three-foot plastic pole I carried to keep the sharks at arm’s length. But after watching how Vin and Debbie handled them over the next week’s dives—caressing them after feeding them a fish, steering them gently away when it was time for them to move on—it became easy to see the sharks in a very benign light. Not once did they make a sudden or aggressive move toward anyone; they moved slowly and deliberately, swimming in large loops and then coming on a glide path to the feeding box, and I felt surprisingly safe in their presence. This is not an exaggeration: The taxi ride from the Freeport airport felt more dangerous than diving with these sharks did.
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