A dorsal fin carousing in the ocean, or at a drinks party for that matter, would generally be something to make your skin creep. But see a shark underwater and you realise how these animals have extraordinary grace and fitness to their environment. Real sharks (rather than the party animal) ride on three fins, set in perfect symmetry at 120 degrees to one another. I noticed this, with wide-eyed fascination, as a Caribbean Reef Shark swam straight at me.
After years of denial that sharks were a problem in their waters, the Bahamas have managed to turn sharks into something of a tourist attraction in recent years. About ten dive operators around the islands offer specific shark dives. It’s hard to be an apologist about an animal that is mostly mouth, particularly when their teeth are on a conveyor belt - new ones constantly roll out as others break off. Also sharks are known to be cannibalistic in the womb. But after years of such resolutely bad press, perhaps they are due a rehabilitation.
My dive was with Unexso in Grand Bahama. We descended fifty feet to a sandy bottom and, shepherded by armed guards we were lined up, kneeling, arms tucked in to our stomachs (we were told not to let our hands stray from our bodies), with our backs to an old hyperbaric chamber. It felt as though we were all about to be beheaded in one swoop.
Soon the feeder, chain-mailed and lumbering like a zombi, loomed into view. The sharks knew what was up already. About ten Caribbean Reef sharks, between six and nine feet long, cruised in and circled him waiting for the food, which he kept in a tube with split rubber ends. Gradually more sharks arrived. Constantly moving, some loitered on the edge, while others dived right in there, nuzzling the feeder in the chest. He grabbed them and held them to him. It all seemed quite tender really.
At Walker’s Cay in the Abaco Islands you receive a bit more of an educational experience to go with your dive. It turns out that the womb sac has hundreds of eggs, most of which don’t develop, providing a ready source of food for those that do. So it seems that sharks are animals, not monsters after all. And intelligent ones too by the sound of things. It was shown here that sharks have long term memory. One shark remembered after six months which coloured button to nose in order to get food. And it was shown that they can communicate. Spookily, other sharks could do the same.
At Walker’s Cay divers descend first, and then a frozen 'chumsicle’ (think fish popsicle made in a bucket) is tethered to the bottom. A hundred Caribbean Reef, Blacktip and Nurse sharks cruise in. You are asked not to go into the ‘zone of competition’, within fifteen feet of the food, but you are free to swim among them elsewhere, even touching them if you are brave enough. They seem not to mind. The reason that you must be wary about letting your hand stray from your body is not that it’s a suddenly available meal to any indiscriminate eater within fifty metres, but that it looks and moves like a fish. (The whiter your hand the more like a fish it is to a shark – a good reason for getting a tan if there ever was one.) There hasn’t been an attack in thousands of dives.
Back at my dive, the feeder was taking the fish sparingly out of the tube, playing with the sharks swirling around him. Suddenly it all threatened to go wrong as one of the sharks knocked the feeder’s mask. Quickly he put the tube down under his foot and concentrated on refilling his mask with air. A Southern Stingray shot in and, using its impressive suction power, hoovered at the tube before darting away. For a moment the feeder was rapidly disappearing in a plug-hole of swirling rubbery grey flesh, but he managed to restore calm. It was then that the shark turned off the main pack and headed for me…
It moved with the laziest insinuations of its body, hovering like a space ship. It was mind-bogglingly graceful. And then, as it continued to swim at me, increasingly alarming. In slow motion, eight foot of shark passed within a couple of inches my head: snout…, diabolic, gummy smile…, pectoral fins…, belly… and then, to my relief, a slowly switching tail. Skin can creep underwater as well.
