The ocean and I have a unique relationship. The ocean is powerful,
beautiful, mysterious, pleasurable and dangerous. Humans can only be farther
outside their element by being in the void of space. It is safe to say that I have
a healthy respect for the ocean. I enjoy and appreciate it while constantly being
at least slightly anxious about my surroundings and something killing me. If you
have read my blog before, you may see the trend that reoccurs around dangerous
and deadly things, so I feel my paranoia is justified to a certain extent. I go
into the ocean often despite my anxieties, partially from the lack of any other
alternatives since I live on a series of tiny islands. I swim, snorkel, and
recently have taken up SCUBA diving. However, if you watch me underwater, you
will see my approach to these activities is much like how one is told how glance
around to all your mirrors in a car. I am constantly rotating my head around,
up/ down, left/ right, and behind (Checking my ‘mirrors’ in effect). This is
largely due to my paranoia of encountering a shark, though other deadly fish
like barracuda and lion fish have been added to the list. I suppose watching things
like Jaws, Megladon, Piranha, and reading things like Shark Life don’t help my
issues. As much as I would like to see something ‘exciting’, and be the first
to point it out to a friend, a larger part of me is hoping it never happens,
because my initial guttural reaction is fear. It also does not help when you
encounter one of these creatures for the first time, because then it is real, THEY
are real, and you realize just how unadapt the human eye is underwater. This is
something I first realized snorkeling in the Bahamas.
We were a group of two guys and two gals, on a day trip from our cruise ship to
the lovely beaches of Half Moon Cay, an island owned by Carnival Cruises in the
Bahamas. The island is nothing but tourists who come off the boat to just spend
time on the beach or rent a little hut with gear, which can be a pleasant change
from the dirty/crazy that can be Nassau or Free Port. Any-who, we rent a hut
and snorkel gear and spend a few hours snorkeling the beach area. At one point
there is a huge school of fish and we enjoy swimming through them, watching
them part around us, one guy chasing them around with his Go-Pro. We swim
through the fish, away from the beach and the fish start to thin as we reach
the edges of the school. From my peripherals I see my very large firefighter
friend drift behind me. It’s at that point I choose to look up. Why is it
always when you catch yourself not doing paranoid surrounding checking that
these things always happen? What I see when I look out into the murky blue of
endlessly deep ocean, there is a very large, very toothy barracuda a few feet
away, eyeballing me in that intelligent and malignant way only barracuda can
do. It’s hovering, barely moving, looking remarkably like the villain barracuda
in the beginning of Finding Nemo. It’s at that moment you realize two things;
1. You’re swimming around in a giant school of sizable baitfish, like an idiot.
2. That your very large firefighter friend saw said large evil fish and did not
try to arrest your forward momentum AT ALL, like an Idiot. Needless to say I
slowly back away, never taking my eyes off the very yellow eyes of the predator
before me. After an encounter like that, when the adrenaline starts to fade and
your safely on shore the thought hits you, ‘If a barracuda that size was drawn
by that huge school of fish…What was in the murky depths circling the barracuda?’
Back to Micronesia now, you realize just how little you can see underwater even in the best of circumstances and from then on, instead of just being paranoid, you KNOW they are just beyond your scope of vision…So, let me set the scene for this particular underwater excursion. The first time I saw a shark was during a SCUBA dive with my friends, where I was not yet certified so I was snorkeling above them. I actually really enjoyed it, because I could free dive down to where they were and scare the pants off them, as well as having a bird’s eye view of things like sea turtles, cuttlefish, sting rays and other such fun creatures, that when you are diving you may not see cause you get so narrowly focused. Anyway, I was on this dive with my snorkel guide and this small black tip comes out of the distance. (I am ALWAYS the first to see a shark on an excursion, I must just be looking harder…) and I point it out to him. I must have been acting kind of twitchy because we surfaced and he laughingly asked me if I was afraid of sharks. In my mind I am going, ‘Who isn’t ?!?!?!’ On that day I snorkeled twice and saw many fun creatures, so I also knew they FOR SURE existed around Yap and therefor I was more worried about seeing them every time I snorkeled, which is often with my group of Yap friends.
On this particular day many things came together for me to be in this exact place at this exact time. Originally myself and three friends were supposed to go to a place called Village View in Maap village but last minute we ended accepting an invitation to have a snorkel and BBQ at my friend’s co-worker’s house in Waniyan village (still on the northern side of Yap). I drove with my friend and her boyfriend. We started out late and then ended up getting lost for an hour trying to find these tiny back roads to her co-worker’s house. Our other friend was coming to meet us but he was late so we decided to go swim without him, leading to us going snorkeling at noon as the tide was going out. This particular beach was near the infamous sink hole of that area, where we were told we would find many interesting creatures. So I was given directions from my friends co-worker on how to find the nearest sink holes and off we went. However the thing about Micronesia is that the tides are pretty extreme and even during high tide, especially in the northern part of Yap; you need to walk out a decent ways to get to sand and coral. Generally you need to pass either rocks or coral which are both slippery and jagged, or traverse treacherous and disgusting feeling weedy grass that covers sizable sinkholes that can break your ankle or your leg. On the north of Yap, it’s the latter. Anyone watching from the beach would have a very humorous time watching us wobbling and bob our way out to water deep enough to lay down an snorkel in. Oh, and let me explain farther, all the gear I have that pertains to snorkeling was a donation from an expat in Yap, because the water culture of Micronesia was not stressed to me well enough when I was packing to come serve. I was wearing an old shirt I picked up somewhere that was a semi-rash guard, board shorts three sizes too small (which I have repaired twice with my sowing kit because you cannot for the life of you find good board shorts in Yap…), a mask that is cheap plastic so literally cuts my face into fearsome looking war scars every time I use it, accompanied by a cheap plastic snorkel. No fins. I reiterate, no fins, because both of my friends had fins, which means they had more speed and maneuverability than myself and were constantly leaving me behind, especially in the beginning, in the headlong swim to get out of the sea grass, which is beyond the kelpy-weedy beds of grass. So I am already feeling a bit exposed (do sharks go for the weakest link?) as we start swimming toward the sand, coral and sink holes. I’m propelling myself mainly with arm power and a bit tired by the time we reach sand, however, it is a nice day, the sun is shining, so that helps to combat the fact that the tide is going out and the water is a bit choppy so visibility is around ten feet or so. It is enough to see the patch of coral in front of you and the nearest ones to either side, dotting the smooth sand around us. Since we have made it to the sand and coral, we slow our paces and float around the various patches of coral, my one friend using her go pro and her boyfriend just floating around. I’m a patch of coral away, taking a moment to float and relax my tired arms. I angle my head up to admire the light on the water, and watch the small patches of bubbles that the waves are creating on the surface. They cascade down into the water as the wave hits and as they race back to the world above, I remember distinctly wondering to myself, “I wonder if that is what it would look like is a shark were swimming near the surface and then quickly changed direction, it’s tail flicking the surface.”
I must think too loud. I also forgot to look around like a paranoid driver. Can I reiterate here how odd It was for me to be looking up?
As I am lowering my head down, there is a flash of gold then my vision is filled with brown green skin and two very large, yellow, reptilian looking eyes. I instinctively jerk my head back at how close this thing is and it jerks a bit in response, arresting its forward motion into my face. Then it registers in my adrenaline clogged brain….shark. Here I am, finless, hovering, isolated from my friends, terrified and warring with my body on how to react. I can see the pores on its nose where the skin starts to turn from brown/green to a more pale color with a dash of red/pink. My initial head jerk is part of a full body spasm that I am trying to control. My hands start to move forward to block in front of me, or stop my forward motion, or stop me from drowning, but survival Colleen stops them. I don’t want to make any sudden movements and provoke the shark. However I don’t want to drown. I want to move away but I don’t want to make any movements so the result is an adrenaline infused rapid set of tiny jerking start and stop motions that rippled through my whole being. It started with the head jerk and trickled down my spine to my legs as my whole body experienced the same reaction as my hands. Don’t move! Move away! Don’t drown! We stare at each other; its eyes boring into mine and about even with my mouth now. It moves forward, the initial jerk stopped it from hitting me but now it is gliding past me so very slowly. This is when I get a better idea of just how big this shark is. We continue to eyeball each other as it glides down the length of my body. I’m suspended in the water, majority splayed out, because I am trying not to move or drown simultaneously, still experiencing those spasms until my mantra of ‘Don’t panic!’ finally starts to penetrate my brain. My legs are extended out behind me and as the shark’s head moves past I stop twitching and replace my mantra with ‘Maintain eye contact, Don’t turn your back!’ which seemed like a good option at the time. So I swivel just enough to maintain eye contact. When its head is at my calves, I still can’t see its tail fin out of my peripheral vision. By the way, I am 5’7. It is also thick, and looks smooth as it glides next to me and we size each other up. Just about when its head passes my feet, I see the flash of gold again, as three pilot fish attach back to its snout. I don’t know if it was me or the fish or its own volition that at that moment, but it gave a jerk, made a 75 degree turn and darted off into the darker blue of the deep.
As it swims off it passes within five feet of my friends and I watch them watch it go by, or at least I think I do. The way my friend with the go pro turns away so nonchalantly, makes me wonder so I wave over to her and indicate she should surface. I am shaking with adrenaline as I gush out, “Can you believe how big that shark was!” to which she replied, “What shark?” You can imagine my shock and I start to relate my encounter to her as her boyfriend comes over. I look over at him and exclaim, “She didn’t see the shark!” to which he replied, “What shark?” I am dumbfounded, it swam right next to them and their heads were turned right towards it. Needless to say the rest of the trip I was a bit terrified and kept telling them not to leave me, especially when we then found a giant stingray laying in the sand and a small black tip shark swims by, all within the next five minutes. The back tip was about the length of my arm and they were excited until I told them how it compared to the other shark in size, then they both seemed to appreciate some of the danger in this creature haven we were in, and not even at the sinkholes yet!
Even though I was terrified we pushed on to the sinkholes. Thankfully we had no more shark encounters and while the coral and drop off were interesting, we were fairly tired and ready to head back. I borrowed my friend’s flippers for the swim back to which my girlfriend that normally splits her fins with me goes, ‘Oh I didn’t realize you didn’t have fins.’ To which her boyfriend says, ‘Why did you think she kept asking us not to leave her?’ It was one of those days. I suggested we call it a day and they agreed. The tide is still going out so we have to do our best to move quickly off this coral lip otherwise we will be suck. My girlfriend and I flutter kick and carefully use our hands to pull ourselves across the coral. It’s only about a foot deep here so I am trying to keep my lungs as full as possible and move my legs as little as possible as we creep along. Over the coral lip, it’s about 2 feet of water, so we race the tide to get as close to shore as we can before we have to give up and walk. Her boyfriend lags behind but makes it across as well, but gives up snorkeling and just walks in. As we were walking back across the squishy grass minefield, watching the brittle sea stars wave their creepy arms around to feed in the rapidly lowering tide, we try not to think about how many of them we are stepping on. I also occasionally squeal as I step on squishy sea cucumbers. As we slough across this expanse, we see a figure passed out on the beach using a coconut for a pillow. It was our missing friend. While we were encountering sharks, rays and battling the tide at sink holes, he was napping in the shade, on the sandy beach with a coconut for a pillow, happy as a clam.
Back to Micronesia now, you realize just how little you can see underwater even in the best of circumstances and from then on, instead of just being paranoid, you KNOW they are just beyond your scope of vision…So, let me set the scene for this particular underwater excursion. The first time I saw a shark was during a SCUBA dive with my friends, where I was not yet certified so I was snorkeling above them. I actually really enjoyed it, because I could free dive down to where they were and scare the pants off them, as well as having a bird’s eye view of things like sea turtles, cuttlefish, sting rays and other such fun creatures, that when you are diving you may not see cause you get so narrowly focused. Anyway, I was on this dive with my snorkel guide and this small black tip comes out of the distance. (I am ALWAYS the first to see a shark on an excursion, I must just be looking harder…) and I point it out to him. I must have been acting kind of twitchy because we surfaced and he laughingly asked me if I was afraid of sharks. In my mind I am going, ‘Who isn’t ?!?!?!’ On that day I snorkeled twice and saw many fun creatures, so I also knew they FOR SURE existed around Yap and therefor I was more worried about seeing them every time I snorkeled, which is often with my group of Yap friends.
On this particular day many things came together for me to be in this exact place at this exact time. Originally myself and three friends were supposed to go to a place called Village View in Maap village but last minute we ended accepting an invitation to have a snorkel and BBQ at my friend’s co-worker’s house in Waniyan village (still on the northern side of Yap). I drove with my friend and her boyfriend. We started out late and then ended up getting lost for an hour trying to find these tiny back roads to her co-worker’s house. Our other friend was coming to meet us but he was late so we decided to go swim without him, leading to us going snorkeling at noon as the tide was going out. This particular beach was near the infamous sink hole of that area, where we were told we would find many interesting creatures. So I was given directions from my friends co-worker on how to find the nearest sink holes and off we went. However the thing about Micronesia is that the tides are pretty extreme and even during high tide, especially in the northern part of Yap; you need to walk out a decent ways to get to sand and coral. Generally you need to pass either rocks or coral which are both slippery and jagged, or traverse treacherous and disgusting feeling weedy grass that covers sizable sinkholes that can break your ankle or your leg. On the north of Yap, it’s the latter. Anyone watching from the beach would have a very humorous time watching us wobbling and bob our way out to water deep enough to lay down an snorkel in. Oh, and let me explain farther, all the gear I have that pertains to snorkeling was a donation from an expat in Yap, because the water culture of Micronesia was not stressed to me well enough when I was packing to come serve. I was wearing an old shirt I picked up somewhere that was a semi-rash guard, board shorts three sizes too small (which I have repaired twice with my sowing kit because you cannot for the life of you find good board shorts in Yap…), a mask that is cheap plastic so literally cuts my face into fearsome looking war scars every time I use it, accompanied by a cheap plastic snorkel. No fins. I reiterate, no fins, because both of my friends had fins, which means they had more speed and maneuverability than myself and were constantly leaving me behind, especially in the beginning, in the headlong swim to get out of the sea grass, which is beyond the kelpy-weedy beds of grass. So I am already feeling a bit exposed (do sharks go for the weakest link?) as we start swimming toward the sand, coral and sink holes. I’m propelling myself mainly with arm power and a bit tired by the time we reach sand, however, it is a nice day, the sun is shining, so that helps to combat the fact that the tide is going out and the water is a bit choppy so visibility is around ten feet or so. It is enough to see the patch of coral in front of you and the nearest ones to either side, dotting the smooth sand around us. Since we have made it to the sand and coral, we slow our paces and float around the various patches of coral, my one friend using her go pro and her boyfriend just floating around. I’m a patch of coral away, taking a moment to float and relax my tired arms. I angle my head up to admire the light on the water, and watch the small patches of bubbles that the waves are creating on the surface. They cascade down into the water as the wave hits and as they race back to the world above, I remember distinctly wondering to myself, “I wonder if that is what it would look like is a shark were swimming near the surface and then quickly changed direction, it’s tail flicking the surface.”
I must think too loud. I also forgot to look around like a paranoid driver. Can I reiterate here how odd It was for me to be looking up?
As I am lowering my head down, there is a flash of gold then my vision is filled with brown green skin and two very large, yellow, reptilian looking eyes. I instinctively jerk my head back at how close this thing is and it jerks a bit in response, arresting its forward motion into my face. Then it registers in my adrenaline clogged brain….shark. Here I am, finless, hovering, isolated from my friends, terrified and warring with my body on how to react. I can see the pores on its nose where the skin starts to turn from brown/green to a more pale color with a dash of red/pink. My initial head jerk is part of a full body spasm that I am trying to control. My hands start to move forward to block in front of me, or stop my forward motion, or stop me from drowning, but survival Colleen stops them. I don’t want to make any sudden movements and provoke the shark. However I don’t want to drown. I want to move away but I don’t want to make any movements so the result is an adrenaline infused rapid set of tiny jerking start and stop motions that rippled through my whole being. It started with the head jerk and trickled down my spine to my legs as my whole body experienced the same reaction as my hands. Don’t move! Move away! Don’t drown! We stare at each other; its eyes boring into mine and about even with my mouth now. It moves forward, the initial jerk stopped it from hitting me but now it is gliding past me so very slowly. This is when I get a better idea of just how big this shark is. We continue to eyeball each other as it glides down the length of my body. I’m suspended in the water, majority splayed out, because I am trying not to move or drown simultaneously, still experiencing those spasms until my mantra of ‘Don’t panic!’ finally starts to penetrate my brain. My legs are extended out behind me and as the shark’s head moves past I stop twitching and replace my mantra with ‘Maintain eye contact, Don’t turn your back!’ which seemed like a good option at the time. So I swivel just enough to maintain eye contact. When its head is at my calves, I still can’t see its tail fin out of my peripheral vision. By the way, I am 5’7. It is also thick, and looks smooth as it glides next to me and we size each other up. Just about when its head passes my feet, I see the flash of gold again, as three pilot fish attach back to its snout. I don’t know if it was me or the fish or its own volition that at that moment, but it gave a jerk, made a 75 degree turn and darted off into the darker blue of the deep.
As it swims off it passes within five feet of my friends and I watch them watch it go by, or at least I think I do. The way my friend with the go pro turns away so nonchalantly, makes me wonder so I wave over to her and indicate she should surface. I am shaking with adrenaline as I gush out, “Can you believe how big that shark was!” to which she replied, “What shark?” You can imagine my shock and I start to relate my encounter to her as her boyfriend comes over. I look over at him and exclaim, “She didn’t see the shark!” to which he replied, “What shark?” I am dumbfounded, it swam right next to them and their heads were turned right towards it. Needless to say the rest of the trip I was a bit terrified and kept telling them not to leave me, especially when we then found a giant stingray laying in the sand and a small black tip shark swims by, all within the next five minutes. The back tip was about the length of my arm and they were excited until I told them how it compared to the other shark in size, then they both seemed to appreciate some of the danger in this creature haven we were in, and not even at the sinkholes yet!
Even though I was terrified we pushed on to the sinkholes. Thankfully we had no more shark encounters and while the coral and drop off were interesting, we were fairly tired and ready to head back. I borrowed my friend’s flippers for the swim back to which my girlfriend that normally splits her fins with me goes, ‘Oh I didn’t realize you didn’t have fins.’ To which her boyfriend says, ‘Why did you think she kept asking us not to leave her?’ It was one of those days. I suggested we call it a day and they agreed. The tide is still going out so we have to do our best to move quickly off this coral lip otherwise we will be suck. My girlfriend and I flutter kick and carefully use our hands to pull ourselves across the coral. It’s only about a foot deep here so I am trying to keep my lungs as full as possible and move my legs as little as possible as we creep along. Over the coral lip, it’s about 2 feet of water, so we race the tide to get as close to shore as we can before we have to give up and walk. Her boyfriend lags behind but makes it across as well, but gives up snorkeling and just walks in. As we were walking back across the squishy grass minefield, watching the brittle sea stars wave their creepy arms around to feed in the rapidly lowering tide, we try not to think about how many of them we are stepping on. I also occasionally squeal as I step on squishy sea cucumbers. As we slough across this expanse, we see a figure passed out on the beach using a coconut for a pillow. It was our missing friend. While we were encountering sharks, rays and battling the tide at sink holes, he was napping in the shade, on the sandy beach with a coconut for a pillow, happy as a clam.
