By Grant
After we had just finished a wonderful afternoon dive of the South Pass I off-handishly suggested to Simon (SV Dragonfly) and Blaz (SV Six&Half) that we should dive the pass later that evening and watch the sharks feeding. The response was a flat NO! I was actually quite relieved. I wasn’t really that keen to do it but I thought I would look cool by suggesting it.
Well I should have known better because not an hour later after we had returned to our respective yachts did I hear Blaz on the VHF saying that he had changed his mind and now wanted to do the dive. And so did Simon. Oops no backing out now.
I was excited but also a little nervous because we didn’t have much idea of what to expect and for that matter where and how to approach the dive. Fortunately I met a dive instructor with Amandine who explained that he dives with his dinghy and goes down with a rope attached so that at the end of the dive, your dinghy has floated along with you. We decided to do the same.
At around 7pm and a few false starts because I forgot my weights and mask (I am wondering if I may have done this on purpose to avoid the dive) we finally reached the moment to enter the water. We had scoped out the dive as well as we could and had even allowed the dinghy to float with the outgoing current to see how it would go. The tide was ripping out at around 3-4 knots and we were all quite nervous. Frankly we never dive on an outgoing tide (for good reason to avoid one being swept to open sea) and this was quite scary. Not to mention the very excited sharks looming below the surface.
The plan was simple. We would enter the water well inside the pass and the 2 boys (Tama and Filip) would stay on the dinghy whilst we held onto a rope which was tied to the dingy. What could possibly go wrong?
As soon as we entered the water I felt scared. I felt the eyes on me. I felt like there were creatures looking at me. I felt like the target. We didn’t waste much time and descended. Holding on the rope was Blaz at the top, Simon in the middle and me at the bottom. No real thought went into this but after a few minutes I was wishing I wasn’t at the bottom. As soon as we could see the bottom we saw the sharks. Hundreds of them. But you can only truly imagine what is around you because you cannot see everywhere. Only the little area your torch is shining on. Your brain is imagining the areas you cannot see and what is happening there? What terrible thing was about to happen to me? The sharks you could see were all swimming with real energy and purpose. Completely different to their daytime meanderings. These were sharks on alert and hunting. Every few seconds one would dart towards a fish and the rest of the sharks would get excited and chase after him. This frenzied behaviour increases your pulse and anxiety quickly. It’s one thing seeing the beautiful docile creatures in the day but at night they look very much the predator and you the prey. Their numbers are also extraordinary. At times, it felt like there were so many you could barely see the ground. They were carpeting the seabed below us. And I was right on top of them.
After a few minutes I started to feel more calm but only marginally and the early anxiety was wearing away. But at this precise moment a shark caught a fish and swam directly at us with dozens of other sharks chasing the first shark. With no time to consider what to do you just freeze motionlessly as they fly towards you. Fortunately most of them veered away but one shark rammed into my leg and it felt like I had been tackled in a rugby game. Don’t ask me about my heart rate because I have no idea. I know only it was fast. Very fast. I was tingling inside.
I felt like we had experienced enough and I was ready to go back but I couldn’t possibly say that to the boys so I just carried on. I later found out they felt exactly the same and would happily ascended at this time and ended the dive. We didn’t. We carried on. 33 minutes and 29.6m being the deepest. Either there are thousands of sharks or the sharks just stayed with us because of our little torches. I have no idea but for all 33 minutes we had hundreds of sharks around us and when we finally ascended we got the scariest moment of the whole dive. They didn’t just stay at the bottom feeding on their fish, a few decided to surface with us and start circling us whilst we did our safety stop. 3 minutes felt like an eternity while we floated 3m below the surface and feeling awfully vulnerable. That was probably the first time I really really was scared of sharks. Watching them feasting below after dark and then floating aimlessly 3m below the surface in pitch dark has a very very eerie feeling about it.
Finally we surfaced but the story didn’t end there. More panic ensued. We were in the mist of a squall and we were well outside the pass in the open sea and the waves were big, the rain was falling and the kids were scared. So were the adults. We couldn’t use the phone to access Navionics because the rain was pelting down and we were very close to the outer reef but we had no idea exactly where we were. After much shouting and screaming we managed to get ourselves back into the atoll and through the pass thanks to the magnificent skippering from Simon and the clear and direct instruction from Blaz. All is well that ends well I guess. But we were all quiet until we were finally safe when everyone just started talking together. It was perfectly clear we were all relieved and all needed a whisky to relax.
We had two GoPro’s with us and we have compiled the best of what we got but sadly the night shooting didn’t capture the true feeling but you judge for yourself. Frankly I don’t really feel like I need to do another Shark night dive again anytime soon. Happy hunting my friends.