And then there were TWO!!!
We released the air from our diving jackets and began our descent. I was on the third open water training dive with two of the cutest girls ever from Spain. They had been a blast to teach. They absorbed the knowledge and amicably competed amongst each other when performing skills in the pool training. In the previous day we had been on the first two open water training dives in Jardines Reef and Shangri-La Reef, seeing depths of 8-12 meters of water. During there first two dives in the Caribbean, they displayed great confidence with all tasks I threw at them underwater. They were ready for what was about to become a diving safari!
As we drifted down to 15 meters , turtles were already taking time from eating their breakfast to give a nod…as if to say “Hello”. We adjust our buoyancy and gently glide over the surface of the bottom of the ocean. Passing big barrel sponges surround in numerous other hard and soft corals, it was hard to fix our sight on any on object too long. “Wow this currents moving along pretty good”, I thought.
We had been down for about 20 minutes, passing a couple big, green moray eels and lots of turtles, when we were starting to come to the part of the reef where we can find not only stingrays, but tarpon. Tarpon are large, silvery fish weighing between 15-40 kilos! And they school in groups up to 100!!! But even they have predators…those here being the elusive Bull Shark. “But this is the end of September, and the Bull Sharks don’t usually show up until December”, flashed through my head as I contemplated the possibility of a shark in the water. As we cruised more into tarpon territory I rolled over to glance out in the blue, and something caught my eye.
“Ok girls! Now here in this reef we can see this… and that, and we might even be lucky enough to see a baby Nurse shark hiding out under something” recalling the dive briefing in my head, as my eagle eyesight kicked in scrutinizing the large image on the horizon. The visibility this day was excellent…about 100 ft. (30m)!!! I instantly knew I needed to get to the bottom and stop all activity. I flipped upside down and caught both girls in my sight right behind me and in close range. I gave them one signal…Thumb down! Get to the bottom. I scanned the bottom finding a rock that I could anchor on to that would hold all three of us in the current. I grabbed, then threw up a hand to catch the closest one. She instinctively grabbed her friends hand and we form a chain.
Bubbles poured out of their regulators at a nice slow stream then shot off in the current. I knew they were not panicked, breathing comfortably. To confirm this, I checked deep into their eyes for any signs of stress or panic. They both just gazed back at me in wonder…not panic. I figured they just thought I wanted to show them some cool animal or something. And was that ever the case!
I looked back in the direction of the Bull shark and nodded to the girls to look that direction. Their eyes lit up like candles when they saw what was swimming towards them. Time had slowed down. The shark, moving effortlessly against the current, came towards us but at a safe range, like 20 meters out. The Bull shark had made its way up the current until it was parrallel to us… then turned. And with a couple big swishes of the tail shot right at us! I looked back at the girls hunkered as close to the bottom as possible and noticed a ton of sand flying up from the last girl in the chain. The shark was completely drawn to this. I imagine he thought it could have been a stingray eating something off the bottom…another Bull shark food source, Great!
The 8 foot male Bull shark came within feet of us, then opened into a circling manuever at a range of 30 ft. (10m) meters. Not too close, but not too far either! They male obviously was very interested in us and our noisy bubble makers. As his circle arced from the deeper side of the sloping reef towards the shallower section, we all couldn’t help but notice the ominous shadow slowing swimming up in the mid-water, that being around 9 meters above us. It was a female Bull shark of about 10 feet (3m+)! She came just about till she was above us and then did a 180 and took off out into the blue. And in that instant the male made a couple funny moves, breaking his circle, then took off into the blue after the female.
As my eyes finally lost sight of the pair I turned my head to the girls to see two of the biggest smiling faces I’d ever seen. They had truly loved every second of that interaction with the animals here and it showed! “Aw crap…air…check it now!”, I signed the girls. They were both well above the low limit and could continue the dive. We got back into sync…”goin’ with the flow” so to speak and I scanned my terrain. I recognized that we were still in tarpon territory, and still had a chance of seeing this massive school of fish. We swam up the gentle slope into shallower water until we came to sand in about 15 meters of water. Out of a hunch we found them! About 75-100 tarpon, all congregated together using the sand as camouflage from Bull sharks. I took one girl in each hand and flew right through the middle of the massive school!
Again, another moment where time stops….you’re completely surrounded by these harmless, giant, Caribbean fish and even though one second feels like minutes… you know you want it to last forever. As we slipped out from the last of the group of tarpon, we headed up for our safety stop. For three minutes, we hung there suspended and weightless looking up at the waves on the surface and then down at each other…shaking our heads at what we had seen. Smirks and smiles all around! Once we hit the surface, the girls went off into speaking Spanish a rate that challenges the speed of light. But I knew it was all good and they had had the dive of their young diving lives!
Once back on the beach we settled into some cold beers and brought out their log books for signatures and recording data from the dive. They were so animated with their log book, drawing pictures and putting in stickers. I asked “Weren’t you girls scared when you saw those sharks?” Both just smiled and said in broken, but cute English,” you said there would be shark. We see shark…muy bien! Gracias!” The end to yet another perfect day.
