Date: Fri 27-Mar-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Jeff-White-column-sharks

Full Text:

Just Making It Down Under

By Jeff White

"Don't worry, Mate," John, my instructor, stated in his most assuring voice.

"They're harmless."

He must have been able to see the tension that riddled every muscle in my

body. I stared with uneasiness into the entrance pool, and with even more

trepidation at the opening leading into the actual aquarium. A few small white

tip sharks swam past the opening. Then a much larger blue shark. I took a deep

breath, and waded in.

I have never been an ocean lover, or a water lover for that matter. When I was

younger, vacations to the beach often highlighted a stark contrast between my

brother and I: where it seemed that some natural disaster would have to occur

to pull him from the water, I was always content with a short dip.

Truth be told, the sheer size of the ocean has always frightened me. Tales of

drowning and shark attacks etched themselves into the deepest parts of that

fear. I've played the scene over and over again in my mind: Richard Dryfuss'

eyes exploding off his forehead as the great shark attacks his cage in Jaws .

Thoughts like these formed their own body of water in my mind as the ferry

bobbed across Sydney Harbour. My destination was Manly Island, one of the many

small outcroppings of land that dot the harbor where I had enrolled in a

"Discover SCUBA" course at the Manly Aquarium.

Simple enough, I thought. The first hour would offer the basics of breathing

and moving underwater, weighted by gear. But the course would take a turn

towards the absurd: a full hour of swimming inside the aquarium with its

inhabitants, culminating in feeding sharks. "What Am I Doing?" resonated

through my mind.

As far back as childhood we are taught to perceive fear as a bad thing. It's

the stuff of horror movies, noises under the bed or physics exams. Fear was

often our earliest educational tool. "I'll teach you," parents promised,

usually after talking back to them.

A climbing friend of mine once revealed to me that he harbored an immense fear

of heights. "Why do you still climb?" I asked him. His reply was candid and to

the point: "I don't want to lose the fear."

If society conditioned us to treat fear as a negative stimuli, why do some of

us seek out risk? Why do we continue to climb? What on earth would possess us,

acknowledging the presence of sharks, to just wade in? The answer rests in

that biochemical cocktail, adrenaline.

Fear is simply our body's way of preparing for an emergency. Adrenaline starts

pumping, respiration increases, the heart beats faster, the central nervous

system is stimulated. All of these factors fine tune our senses. Our

concentration levels increase; our mental focus sharpens. As the situation

grows more dicey, as flight starts to win over fight, our alertness increases,

and we get through .

To some, this brings a state of euphoria, a "natural high." Others just

experience the relief of having "made it." Whichever reaction it is, the

presence of fear allows us all to push our limits that much farther, to truly

come to terms with our capabilities. The lesson is simple: keep climbing the

same rock, and you'll get used to the height. So next time, climb higher.

These thoughts swam through my mind as I made my way into the aquarium. For

the past hour I had learned the basics of SCUBA. The hand signals, the

importance of "popping" your ears as one dives deeper, the feeling of

breathing and weightlessness under water. Still, I was anxious about the task

at hand. Was I prepared to spend an hour in there?

As I made my way down to what seemed at the time as abysmal depths, my lungs

expanded and contracted at race car speed. My ears exploded and my face mask

seemed to want to leave a permanent tattoo on my forehead.

Then I saw my first shark, a sand shark, not much larger than a small dog,

just floating a few yards in front of me. I made my way, as surreptitiously as

possible, towards it. It hardly moved. Closer. Still, no movement. Before I

knew it, I was staring at it, the shark just a foot or so away from my mask. I

thought, "I'm having a staring contest with a sand shark." And I wasn't about

to blink.

The shark fled, and as I followed it, I became aware of the myriad types of

fish and other marine life that were sharing the water with me. Giant Sting

Rays, which looked like floating pancakes, cast huge shadows over the aquarium

floor as they glided through the water. Sea turtles, which moved with

surprising grace to my left.

I made my way through the underwater rainbow of fish towards the area where

the sharks liked to reside. An eight-foot blue shark passed about five feet

above my right shoulder. White tip, sand, and nurse sharks, of varying sizes,

all weaved around one another.

John looked at as if to say, "now for the fun part." By his side was a small

bucket out of which he pulled a small, dead fish and handed it to me. My heart

firmly ensconced in my throat, I held my arm out straight, forming a right

angle with the rest of my body. John had explained beforehand that the types

of sharks we were dealing with were harmless, lagoon dwelling sharks.

Australians refer to them simply as "reefies." Man-eating sharks, like Great

Whites, they call "munchies."

No sooner had my armed locked out straight than a small nurse shark came up

from behind and snatched its snack from my trembling hand. With the

realization that I still had all my limbs, I reached for another fish. A few

minutes passed before a six-foot (adjusting for adrenaline magnification,

probably only about four feet) blue shark took interest and plucked the fish

from my clenched fist.

As a shark's mouth opens, a kind of lower eyelid, a white membrane, covers the

eye so that, at the moment of munch, the animal is effectively blind. This

protects the shark's eyes from its prey. On a few occasions I was tempted to

wave a snack through the water, and just as the shark was about to commence

feeding, jerk it away from the blind fish. Ha-ha, shark. But the thought of

playing practical jokes on a shark, man-eater or not, ultimately did not seem

smart.

As the minutes flowed by, I became aware of every nuance of that aquarium. The

little bits of coral growing in dark corners. The tiny sharks' teeth that

would blend with the sand on the aquarium floor. The "Oh my god, shark!"

instinct soon dissipated into a calm brought on by the rhythmic act of hearing

each breath going in and out. My muscles were relaxed. I was in a meditative

state. John's tap on my shoulder provided a cruel gong of reality: it was time

to surface.

So I emerged from the tank, leaving my tension and anxiety to swim permanently

with the marine life. The same fear I felt when stepping into the entrance

pool had provided a focus for the deed at hand while I was submerged. I saw

things, felt things, and surfaced unscathed.

We all face our daily entrance pools, with a view of shark-infested waters not

far away. When every instinct shouts "go back," we need to take a deep breath

and wade in. Holding out a fish is optional.

(Editor's note: Jeff White, of Willowbrook Lane, Newtown, is currently

enrolled at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia, where he is

participating in a semester of study abroad. His home university is Boston

College, where he is a junior studying political science with the hope of

becoming a journalist.)