Dancing with sharks!

Written July 2002

The sunbeams were dancing all over the place, spreading a magic light, which would leave nothing to the imagination. I looked up at Jim who was lowering his body slowly towards me, with his huge equipment in hand. This was too good to be true! We'd done the same thing over and over again the last couple of days. First it was Ben and I, this time Jim and I. I held on hard to prevent my body to be torn away as I was waiting for Jim to descend. We had timed for it to be a calm act this time, and didn't expect that we were about to experience the most exhilarating excitement. Finally, Jim came down beside me and together we let go and were swept off with the roaring current into the blue...

The Raroia atoll
From the point of entry just outside the lagoon, we blew through the center of the shallow pass at 20 m, and came on to the coral garden on the inside of the Raroia atoll. There, carefully layered on top of a green coral garden, was the Double Sandwich again: In lee behind every cauliflower of green-bluish hard coral, lay a grouper - hundreds and hundreds of them forming the dense bottom layer of a live Fish Sandwich. On top of them, and even more densely packed, was the Snapper layer. Two meters high, uncountable numbers of them formed a slowly moving pattern, all pointing head towards the current, as if they were painted on overcrowded wallpaper. Visibility in these clear waters would have been endless, weren't it for the immediate cut off vision right in front of our eyes by this reddish, mesmerizing wallpaper. As we approach, it carefully folds around us and constantly enwraps us as we precede through though the current, the school itself standing still. To stop our pace, we catch on to a piece of coral and simply hang on, steadying ourselves to the bottom. In this way it is possible to watch the scene while our legs and fins freely wave in the current, like a white Peace Flag... (Only my fins are black). From above, this Double Fish Sandwich would cover football fields; A heaven for the hungry to dig in to such an appetizing smorgasbord! Needless to tell Who were The Hungry in this story?
The tension in the hovering Sandwich was noticeable. I knew from our previous dives that the Snapper-wallpaper at any time drastically would tear apart and reveal a close-up Colgate-smile of someone my own size. I'd smile back, patting my tummy indicating that I was already full, and wasn't attempting to snatch anything from his table. And in case he didn't merely see me as an uninvited guest AT his table, but rather as a delicious surprise ON it, I’d point towards a barracuda I'd just seen that would be an even bigger treat than I. (I really mean TREAT, like a children's surprise in a Big Mac!)

Sharks.
Anyway, these grinning, lazy smiles mainly belong to grey bodied reef sharks, Black-finned. But when Ben and I went snorkeling on the outside of the atoll a few days earlier, we were no longer than 1 minute in the water until a big, impressive, broad-shouldered Bull shark came up to only a few meters below the surface to check us out, accompanied by a bunch of curious reef sharks. As we hadn't intended to go snorkeling at this time (just a tiny land expedition; mask-and-snorkel in hand just-in-case) we were only in our bare thin human skins in the water and without fins in the waves braking over the reef table. Hugh, does my Main Protective Barrier to the Hostile Environment of Microbes, seem utterly fragile and useless at encounters with fierceful creatures like this, too big to fit into a test tube! Huvva! I have also had brown Lemon sharks with long, swaying tails inspect me when I was collecting oysters, clams and scallops inside the deceivingly, peaceful turquoise waters of the lagoon!

Food time

However, so far, I've been let collect our dinner unharmed, and later we had fresh off-the-shell sushi, sundowner, chowder and you name it! Mmmm! Delicious!
As delicious as the Double Sandwich at the Swim-Through-Place. Obviously it is the favorite hangout for the locals when the current rips through the only pass of the atoll, attracting anything that can swim, including us. Everyone attending the giant smorgasbord, weather his fate is to eat or be eaten, appears to be carelessly minding their own business. Jim is struggling with his huge camera equipment in the current. I am trying to stick close to him, but in front of the camera lens as we agreed. Jim has flattered me into being his Under-Water-Super-Model, but all I think he wanted was an extra shield between him and Whatever! The tension was hovering in the air, sorry, water. Nervously, the Sandwich waits for the first bite. Suddenly, in an instant, the thick swaying Snapper curtain is rapidly torn apart. Onto the scene enters, not one (1) drooling grin, nor many, many, as we've seen previous times, but literally hundreds (100s)! They are an embodied, grey grinning mass, another swirling curtain, this time with an overcrowded shark-pattern. And I must say that the ones I could see were only the hundred that were the closest to me... Who knows how many were beyond my range of vision, or hidden behind the Snapper wallpaper, or just approaching from behind...? Speechless, still with the regulator in my mouth, eyes popping out of their holes, though, I tried to look at the camera lens and at the sharks at the same time, sternly smiling towards both, wishing I was born with a face on either side of my head, and lead in my stomach. Trying to keep track of who ever was shooting at me, whether shark or cameraman, I was practicing my new underwater-pose that I learnt from the Bull shark: Big is Beautiful, or at least Broad-Shouldered is Bigger! Now how that pose comes out on a picture, future will tell! I promise to publish the pictures on the web when I get them!
I guess you've seen docile sharks gracefully wiggle their bodies to and fro, at least on National Geographic. Well, when a shark decides to go for a bite, he blasts into this high-velocity goal-seeking torpedo. When hundreds of them go at the same time, it's indescribable. Luckily, Jim and I were not programmed targets, and the shark-curtain opened up around us, the fleeding snapper-curtain racing by beside us, current still ripping at us...
Now, if Scuba Divers are not on the Menu for sharks, their ankles sure appear to be a popular appetizer in knee-deep water! Especially if they wear black booties and short-legged wet suit as Ben does when he wonders across the reef table. He has been attacked dozens of times - the small black-tipped seeming to be the most keen on him. Today, though, the whole of Ben almost ended up as lunch while he snorkeled in the pass of Tepoto. He had taken a bad shot with his spear gun on a parrot fish, which ripped itself apart on the spear, splashing and tossing his blood and guts all around Ben. The sharks had been waiting at the pass, as usual, for the current to bring something edible, and this was it. Within seconds, four, five or six of them (Who counts in such a situation?) were, you-name-it, around him - under his arms, between his legs, everywhere. I was on land, watching the black tipped fins frantically skidding around his snorkel, giving just a brief hint of the fury going on below the water. From above it was only going on for a minute, from below, it seemed like an eternity. He is still alive to tell the story, not a scratch, but with a new nickname: Dances with Sharks!

Updated Aug 26