Tall stories from the deep

© Chad Clark  16-8-00

"I’ll just jump in and check the current then", said I. Famous last words. One giant stride later and I flashed past the corner of Ras Za’atar at a million knots. Dropping down the wall and looking out into the blue I thought I saw the silhouette of a shark. Now divers are a strange breed. Shout shark to most people and they get out of the water. Not your average diver. Shout shark to a diver and they can’t get in quick enough and I confess I’m no better. Now where’s he gone? I thought. I must have been mistaken. No, there he was again, just on the edge of my visibility. I went out a little bit further, then a little bit further again. Ever seen a shark move? All of a sudden he was right there staring at me with those cold black eyes. I seemed to have his full and undivided attention. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I was out in the blue, 30m down and the reef was just a dark shadow in the distance behind me. The books say that at times like this you should hit the bottom. They jest; it’s over 900m down there. Don’t go up, they say, stay calm and don’t move. Sure, moving’s not an option, but have you ever tried staying calm when a silvertip is 10 metres away icily staring at you with its back up and its pecks down? It wasn’t easy, especially when he started circling around between the reef and me. Then, all of a sudden, gone. Into the blue from whence he came. Slowly, a kind of self-congratulatory calm returned to my soul for a fleeting moment. Then he was back, shit, this time closer, and quite possibly even angrier about my encroachment on his territory. At this moment, even though I could see the all the details of the battle scars on his skin, I could see absolutely no life in his eyes. I stopped having fun, for what seemed like an eternity. Round and round we slowly danced in some surreal ballet, as closer and closer he came.

All of a sudden my computer started beeping frantically and I saw the flashing arrow appear on the screen. I was going up, fast. I dumped some air and looked back but the silvertip was gone. But where? A quicker pirouette has never been performed underwater, as I span frantically round every which way to see where the bastard was. With fins up and head down I charged the reef wall, quickly turned around, and pretended to be a soft coral whilst I endeavored to regain my composure, lower my heartrate and take control of my bodily functions. I’d shot up 10m and used 120 bar of air in this little escapade. And my wetsuit was warm.

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