Diving with great white sharks
Personally I blame Tim Cahill. We met at the International Travel Writers Conference at Book Passage book store in Marin County, California. Tim was the star, the guest speaker, lecturer and world famous travel writer. I was a features writer for the Pacific Sun, a prestigious weekly newsmagazine in one of the best communities to live in the United States, and a wannabe travel writer. I swapped a free invite to the Conference in exchange for writing a cover story in the Sun. Along with all other attendees, I wanted to learn about travel writing. More importantly, I wanted to meet and snag a few select tips from Tim. That’s how I ended up in the cold water of the North Pacific Ocean hoping to come face to face with a great white shark.
Tim is the bestselling author of Jaguars ripped my flesh, Pecked to death by ducks, and other humorous travel tales of wild adventures in weird places. I listened carefully to what he had to say to all the attendees in his talk and met him afterwards for a private mentoring session. What Tim told me then resonates to this day and is apparent in a lot of my own travel writing, especially one key piece of advice.
“You read travel magazines today, the writers are extreme skiers throwing themselves off cliffs without knowing what’s on the other side,” he said. “People are wrestling grizzly bears and rowing around the world left-handed. It’s all crazy stuff designed to get attention. The problem is these kids are all 21 years old and don’t think about getting killed. You and I are too old for that. There’s a better way to get published.”
It’s true I wasn’t 21 any more at the time. Double that and add a few years for luck. Even at age 21 I never had any interest in killing myself. At middle age what I needed was some advice as to clever ways to break into a crowded market dominated by crazies and nut bars. That’s why I went to talk to Tim. He was out of shape, old and famous. Turns out he had some great advice for me. I’ve used it in most of my own adventures and stories since then. In a nutshell, Tim’s advice was simple: “Attack your fears. Afraid of heights? Go parachuting. Better yet, find your phobia and find ways to address it head on. That will sell.”
At that time I was not consciously aware I had any phobias. Snakes, spiders, rats, politicians, bats, crocodiles and the usual suspects didn’t bother me at all. I was averse to beets, Rottweilers and editors but they didn’t count as phobias. Finally, after much soul searching, I realized I was worried about drowning and sharks. Both had to do with water. I don’t think anyone likes drowning and a surprising number people don’t want to be eaten by a shark. Whether it’s a lion, tiger, grizzly or shark, few people seem to relish the idea of being eaten by an animal. It just doesn’t seem right. People are supposed to eat animals, not the other way around.
Emboldened by my newly found focus, I took a good look around at ways of incorporating both my phobias into one so I could experience them both at the same time and perhaps remove them from my subconscious. Two birds with one stone. I found a company that specialized in crazy adventures, things like putting nimrods into the passenger seat of a race car at 200 mph, or gun nuts getting bodyguard training, or putting whackballs into long distance helium balloon races and similar rubbish. We arranged that I would write a cover story about their offers to put idiots into the water with great white sharks off the shores of Marin County. They were charging $1,000 per victim, which seemed to me an outrageous amount, but if you got eaten at the end, hey, what the heck did it matter?
It’s a long cruise from San Francisco to the Farallon Islands in the “Red Triangle,” about five hours by boat. It’s called the Red Triangle because of the mayhem in the water. Creatures eating other creatures create lots of blood. Thanks to a process called “upwelling,” found in only one percent of the world’s oceans, plankton is forced to the surface of the water. Evidently this attracted a lot of salmon coming through, which attracted the seals, which attracted the sharks. The Gulf of the Farallones is a protected marine park, so no human predators. Perfect conditions for great whites. By the way, these were not harbour seals; they were elephant seals, huge slabs of blubber like corn fed Oklahoma bubbas, the favorite food for great whites, which is why the great whites off the Marin County coast are the biggest in the world.
I had previously heard about the size and number of great whites off Marin County. All you need to do is enjoy a family picnic at Stinson Beach, the only white sand beach in the entire Bay Area, and take a look at the signs. Basically the signs say “stay out of the water” because you may get eaten. This does not seem to dissuade the local surfers who are not the brightest of bulbs in the first place. On a good day you can sit on the beach with a ham and cheese sandwich and watch the fins of sharks drift by. I once saw a great white chase a harbor seal right up on the beach. They have very big teeth. The sharks, that is.
We hadn’t even arrived at the Farallons when several customers changed into the wet suits provided. These were real keeners, what sharks might call “appetizers.” These loonies wanted to be the first into the cage and stare at the Big Fella face to face. Here is where the truth comes in. You don’t slather yourself with blood, jump overboard and say: “Here I am, come get me.” That would be foolish. The only reason I signed up for the trip was because I knew we divers would be inside a cage. Theoretically the shark stayed outside the cage and you could wave at it or make faces. Presumably the bars were titanium or steel or some sort of impregnable metal that served the purpose of keeping the shark safely on the other side of the cage. Otherwise I would never have gone.
To be honest (like the phrase “trust me,” you should never trust anyone who says “to be honest”) my real phobia was just being underwater. I am told I fell into a neighbor’s fish pond as a little boy and nearly drowned, but of course I don’t remember it. As a consequence, I was always terrified of the ocean and wouldn’t go in water above my knees. Actually, when it comes to beaches where great white sharks like to prowl and snack, I don’t even go in to my knees. Diving with great whites meant getting into a cage and breathing through an air hose connected to tanks on the boat. That means being completely underwater, which was my real fear. In fact it was a true phobia. I was terrified of the breathing aspect of the experience.
We anchored well off one of the islands and the staff started to unload the cage and prepare it to be lowered into the water. I casually wandered over and pulled out my tape measure, brought especially for this purpose. The dive leader took one looked and her mouth fell open. “What in the world are you doing? I’ve been leading trips for 20 years and never seen that before.”
“I am measuring the space in between the bars,” I replied, carefully doing so and making notes for my story. “I need to know exactly how much space there is between the openings of the bars.”
“What for?” she asked, a look of pure puzzlement on her face.
“I should think that would be very obvious,” I replied, taking my measurements. “The bars on the sides are 10 inches wide, which is not a problem. On the other hand, I note that the openings on the ends are about 36 inches. I’d like to know just how much of the shark can get into the cage and have a nibble. I watched some video where a shark off South Africa stuck its nose into the cage and tried for a nibble. In that case I want to memorize in advance exactly where I should stand and put my hands and feet.”
“Great white sharks are too big to get into the cage,” she replied. “They couldn’t even get their noses in.”
“I am also wondering about the top of the cage,” I said, pointing. “I note there are no up bars there at all. Why is that?”
“We need to keep the top of the cage open” she said. “That’s where we feed the air hoses down into the cage. There are six people in the cage and that means six hoses. It’s congested.”
“Suppose,” I said, smiling my biggest smile, “just for conjecture, that a great white came flying out of the water to strike the dummy seal that is floating on the surface next to the cage. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the shark landed in the cage. With the six people. Inside. Just for conjecture.”
“Oh, that’s only happened once,” she said, helping move the cage off its rack and off the side of the boat. “and it was years ago.”
“A shark landed in the cage? With six people in it? How big was the shark and what happened”?
“Oh, it was about twelve feet but it got out again,” she replied.
“Not the shark,” I said with some fear in my voice. “What about the people? Did anyone die of a heart attack?”
By this time the dive leader appeared to be getting fed up with my questioning, but a journalist has to do what a journalist does, which is ask questions and write stories. So I followed her to the side of the boat where the cage was being positioned. “What are the chances of actually seeing a shark?”
“It’s a very big ocean,” she replied, “but last week we had a 17-footer swim by so close to the cage you could reach out and touch it. The skin feels like leather.”
The realization that I was about to get into a cage where a great white shark might come by and look me in the eyeball gave me pause for more consideration. The thing about sharks is they don’t seem to have any sympathy in their eyeballs. Their eyes are as cold as death. Like alligators and crocodiles, sharks have survived for millions of years because they evince very little social responsibility. They are like right wing reactionaries but with very large teeth. It’s “survival of the fittest” at very close quarters.
I put on my wet suit, all the time wondering if I was really stupid enough to get in the cage and scare myself to death. There were a couple of people in front of me who acquired “wet feet,” so to speak, paying big dollars to come play with sharks but then chickening out at the last moment. Even though my trip was free in exchange for publicity, I wondered why I was actually going to get in the water. There was a metal plank leading down from the boat to the cage, so you really had to “walk the plank” to get in the cage. I sat on the edge of the plank and pondered the alternatives and realized I had forgotten to remember to be the last person in line. The next person behind me cleared his throat and hummed and hawed so I had to put up or shut up, and therefore down the hatch I went.
There is one part of the breathing apparatus, the mouthpiece, on which you first had to take some deep breaths on board the boat before descending, not to ascertain if the tubes actually work but so you can practice hyperventilating with fear in advance. I sank down about three feet and grabbed on to the bars with one hand, the other hand clutching my mouthpiece, and immediately started to hyperventilate. I counted to ten and tried to relax before I used up all the air in the tank, but fear was upon me like a man on the gallows. It wasn’t fear of the shark; I had forgotten all about the shark. It was the horror of being under water. I couldn’t believe I was breathing under the surface. I looked up and the boat was right there. I was no more than a couple of feet below the surface. I could almost reach out my arm out of the cage into thin air, but the shock that I was breathing through a tube took all my attention. I clutched on to my mouthpiece like a baby sucks on its mother’s breast. I froze.
After about ten minutes I came to my senses and realized where I was. I looked to see where I had put my feet. I saw I was clutching a bar on the front of the cage and wondered if I should clutch a bar at the back of the cage instead. I thought about where I would stand and what I would do if the Big Fella came by and stuck his nose into the cage. I looked up and saw that the piece of floating carpet designed to look like a seal was still floating on the surface next to the cage. I looked around and noticed there were several other divers in the cage with me, none of whom were hanging on to their mouthpieces. I hung tightly on to my mouthpiece. I began to remember there was supposed to be a big fish as part of the overall equation. Oh, yes, the sharks. Where were they?
Visibility in the water in the Farallon Islands is only about sixty feet. After that the water turns dark blue and then black. A great white would be easy to see if it appeared. I studied the view from east to west, not holding my breath in anticipation but rather trying to breathe normally. No sign of the mighty beast, which was actually a relief. Did I really want to get face to face with one? Did I wish to reach out and pat it on the head and say: “Nice sharky, good sharky? My what big teeth you have.” I did not. Being scared to death twice at the same time is not good for your health. Then I noticed I was shaking, not from fear but from cold. Wet suit or not, it’s cold in the North Pacific Ocean. I waited awhile more, to see if I would get lucky/unlucky, then decided I already had my story. I didn’t need to get eaten for my ending. Just conquering two phobias at the same time was enough.
I climbed back up and out on deck, divested myself of the gear, and did what any sensible person would do, which was sit down and stop shaking and have a beer. This is where I met the Aussie. He was also having a beer, which Aussies are known to do from time to time, and staring out the window. He did not appear to be a happy camper. He said a great white had made an appearance at another boat anchored a hundred yards away, flying out of the water like a locomotive with a mouthful of black decoy carpet stuck in its moth, giving a heart attack to the people who were leaning over the railing. It was a thrill he was sorry to miss.
“It cost me $1,500 just for the airfare from Sydney,” he grumbled. “I’ve been looking for a great white my whole life, and these islands here are lousy with them, and I didn’t see a damn thing. A waste of time and money.”
“Large fish, but larger ocean,” I replied. “No guarantees. I thought it was great just to get down in the cage. Gave me the fear of my life.”
Suddenly there was a scream from the front deck and we all rushed outside to see what it was about. Somebody yelled “predation.” There was a shark’s fin visible in the water, whipping back and forth with ruthless ferocity. A pool of blood appeared in the water, growing larger by the second. Large chunks of flesh and blubber popped up and bobbed on the waves. A flock of sea gulls suddenly appeared, screaming in unison. A 700-pound elephant seal was being torn to shreds right in front of our eyes. No one said a word. We watched in horror as the blood rippled across the water, and then the fin disappeared. The seagulls settled down on the waves for a feast.
“My God,” said the Aussie. “Can you believe that? We were just in that water ourselves. It could have been us. That was worth flying a few thousand miles to see.”
It was a five-hour cruise back to San Francisco. A fire engine red sky appeared at sunset, the color of blood. It sank very slowly into the western sky, like a giant eyeball sinking into a sea of flame. Soft waves lapped at the sides of the boat, and somewhere below in the depths a great white killing machine slowly swam looking for its next victim. Darkness came, and I was left alone with my thoughts.