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So how was it, diving with sharks?

The answer: totally awesome! It was a long day (I had to get up at 3:30am to make it to the dock in Emeryville by 5:30), but totally worth it. I met some really great people that I hope to stay in touch with, pushed myself past my own limits, and came face to face with Great White Sharks.

Here’s how it worked, we road a boat out to the Farrallon Islands, which by the way is the most Great White Shark infested place on the planet. The only two other places that have high concentrations of Great Whites are in South Africa and Australia, but neither have as many as the Farrallons.

I, ever prone to motion sickness, was woozy the whole time! But, I didn’t let that stop me from suiting up and getting into the cage. Everybody tried to reassure me that it would be okay if I threw up into the regulator, but some how, that didn’t make me feel any better. We took turns 4 of us in the cage at a time, there were about 12 people there (plus the crew) so each group got about a half an hour at a time, and 3-4 turns each in the tank.

At first we didn’t see anything except jellyfish (I hate jellyfish…ever since I got stung in Costa Rica), but there were all kinds of jellyfish, some as small as your fist, and some as big as a steering wheel, and some that looked kind of like scrambled eggs. They are actually quite pretty to see swimming around, but I still hate them.

After an hour or so of jellyfish viewing, somebody spotted a “predation event”. That’s just a fancy way of saying that a shark was eating something. We quickly pulled the cage up and headed over. Sure enough, there was a huge pool of blood spreading out in the ocean. A HUGE pool of blood. We watched as a shark took down an elephant seal. It was pretty brutal.

The crew anchored the boat, so that we’d be inside the ‘scent stream’. They told us, that if we got lucky, the boat would drift over to the blood pool, and we could dive in the blood. Lucky? I’d say it was lucky that we ended up not in the blood pool.

This is when all the sharks came out. The guys in the tank got some amazing shots, and I saw a bunch of sharks from the deck. They were HUGE. I went in expecting them to be huge, but still I was shocked. They were so close to the boat, that I could have reached over and touched them as they swam by…if I was crazy!

There were some scientists out tagging the sharks. Apparently, they do this everyday, but the 18 foot long shark that was first to arrive at the boat wasn’t tagged, so later the scientists had to ‘bag it and tag it’. About 5 or 6 sharks came over to the boat in all. Not only were they soooo long, but wide too. They were like 3 feet wide.

I remember thinking that it was so hard to see them from the boat. They are so well camouflaged, it would have been impossible to get a picture of them. I also learned how to spot a shark. Contrary to popular belief, it’s pretty rare that they swim at you with their dorsal fin out of the water – like in Jaws. Instead, you need to watch for a ‘boil’ which is just a circular pattern of water displacement. Now that I know what to look for, you can bet any time I’m even near the ocean I’ll be watching for it.

I was really surprised how hard it was to find sharks. I mean, even in the most shark infested place on the planet, we had a hard time finding them. I used to think that if there were people or boats or anything in the water, that sharks would be drawn to it. Not so, I guess….which is reassuring!

The hardest part for me wasn’t the huge man eating fish, it was going down under the ocean. I had a hard time with the regulator and the cold! Holy Moly, it was cold! Zach would have been so proud!

All in all, it was a VERY cool experience and one that I’m very glad I did! I was the only single person there, everybody else came with a partner. I was also, by far, the youngest person there – so everybody sort of watched out for me and helped me.

I feel very lucky to have been able to do this. Not many people can say that they’ve seen a shark or dived in shark infested waters. I would do it again in a heart beat. It was very cool!

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