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MY Shark encounter (An excerpt from our Nov 20 07 newsletter)

 DiveCon Confessions by Julie Duncan  

Ok I am not a dive con or instructor but I thought I’d put this bit in, after all it’s my newsletter and I can do almost whatever I want. It would have to be the one word that instils the most fear when it comes to the water SHARKS!!!!!!! and I surmise that we can thank the media and THAT MOVIE for the anti shark hysteria. Don‘t jump in the ocean a shark will get you!

 What about sharks? It’s probably one of the most common questions I am asked during enquiries regarding learning to dive courses.

Let’s try some points of clarification– you have a better chance of being hit by a bus trying to cross the road out the front of the shop in search of one of the world famous chicken schnitzel rolls with gravy from Country Kitchen. (If they aren’t world famous they should be)

Per annum MORE PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY ALLERGIC REACTIONS TO BEE STINGS IN OZ THAN SHARKS.

Per annum MORE PEOPLE DIE AS A RESULT OF BEING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING IN OZ THAN SHARKS. It’s just that you don’t make the front page of every paper in the country. (OK feel better now?).

Statistically 2-3 people per year die of allergic reactions to bee stings in Australia. And lighting strikes has very much the same statistic. The same statistics state that 1 person on average dies from a shark attack. Or how about Ron has been scuba diving for some 29 years from the North Sea to Kuwait and the USA and all around OZ and its environs and he still has all his fingers and toes.

Still not convinced? Then what if I recount my first encounter with a shark(s).

Having overcome my fear of the ocean by learning to dive, Ron and the boys had decided a bit of a road dive trip was in order. So we loaded up the car with dive gear including my tub of colour co-ordinated scuba gear (pink and silver grey) and we headed to South West Rocks on the NSW north coast. The boys had completed a number of trips to SWR over the years and returned home relating tales of swimming through the cave and not to mention the shark gutters.

So day 1 dawns and it is apparent that the planned dive on fish rock cave is to be aborted, plan 2 the shark gutters. We head out, 2 boat loads, 24 divers – I would inject into the tale here that anyone who knows me knows that I don’t like boats - well more to the point my stomach does not like them - if the anchor is going off the bow I have to be bailing over the side or stern. There’s Noel at the helm giving us the dive brief ‘we were out here yesterday and had 24 GNS.’ Great I’m thinking one diver per shark. Noel goes on to tell us that if one shark comes over about 3m in length and starts nudging its just Buddha. I’m standing there thinking not only 1 diver per shark but they have named them too. I had visions of some monster shark swimming over offering its outstretched pectoral fin ‘Hi I’m Buddha, crunch’. Anyway the stomach had already started to churn, and I’d rather face death than stay on the boat and be sick, so we hit the water. Descend to about 20 or so metres and to say that I was scared s*tless would be an understatement abject terror might be a more apt. I was convinced I was about to be shark brunch. I had Ron’s hand in a firm grip (His fingers were white when he took his gloves off later on the boat). Kneeling on top of the gutter a few of the more adventurous divers had descended even deeper and closer. I was sucking on my reg so fast I was getting head spins, eventually I calmed the breathing rate to a slightly more sensible rate, and started to take stock of my surroundings yep lots of sharks, but lots of fish too- hm if there is lots of fish then the sharks cant be to hungry right? It sounded convincing to me at the time anyway. So there we were kneeling on the rocks, me with a death grip on Ron’s hand and Ron elbows me and points. Oh god what now, am I about to die or what (echoes of the Jaws music reverberated through the brain) I look above us in the general direction of where he is pointing. And there is the mother of all sharks just metres away floating in the slight underwater surge. She seemed to be monstrous, at least the size of a locomotive (she was really probably not much bigger than me) Ron gave me a signal to try and calm down relax. Yeah right. She floated over our head less than a hand span separated her underbelly from our heads then I felt a tug on my fins – if I was about to lose a leg or worse then I wanted to look death in the face. With trepidation I turned to look over my shoulder and my fear turned to relief. An over zealous blue groper had developed an affinity for my lolly pink fins.

After what seemed at the time to be hours underwater we ascended and we broke through the surface and I don’t think I stopped yapping about the sharks and did you see this one and what about that one, for the entire surface interval. Ron would probably say that the only thing that shut me up was going for another dive. The entire dive was probably not much more than 40 minutes in total, and was probably one of the scariest things I had ever done. Since that dive I’ve done lots of dives which included sharks, and innumerable dives which were probably more spectacular but they have blurred in comparison to my first encounter with grey nurse sharks.