Today I saw my first shark in the wild! I can’t tell you how excited I am about the encounter. Dive twenty-nine and I had the privilege of meeting a wild shark.
James, Sissy and I set out on a boat from the Westin Hotel on Seven Mile Beach at 8:15am this morning. We headed north-east toward the wreck of the Kittiwake on what was, to be honest, a very grey and unpromising day. The sea was mill-pond flat but there was none of the usual Caribbean sun beating down.
For those of you that follow dive news you will know that during Tropical Storm Nicole and Hurricane Irma the wreck of the Kittiwake took a battering. One of her four anchor chains snapped and she was driven across the sea bed. To the edge of deep and the Cayman Trench. The only thing that stopped her from disappearing into the black endless deep was the coral wall that she now rest against.
Tilted onto her side she is an entirely new dive adventure. Hovering above her you can look over the wall to the Deep. She is if anything more of a ghost ship than ever!
But for all of her eeriness she is beautiful. The gashes in her side that I entered through last time are now pressed into the sand on the side she lies on. So on this visit our dive concentrated on the upper hull, decks and super structure. A stunning dive.
The crazy angles of her rooms, floors and ceilings played tricks with our senses. The whole world tilted. Physics and perception array. Inside the ship it is so easy to become disoriented as fish seemingly swim along at mad impossible angles, bubbles rise sideways and you fall towards the wall. Wonderful, like a crazy house at a fairground!
In the six months, since I last visited her, nature has taken an even tighter grip of her. Her tilted angle making her less of a human thing than ever, remaking her as an alien place. The deck and superstructure are like a warped playground.
We left the Kittiwake laying there in her watery grave. Silent and hanging over the night below and headed back to the our dive boat on the surface.
Once back on deck we swapped our tanks and got underway. We relocated to a shallow site and a reef called Ballero. The reef was teeming with fish and we were greeted by a stingray, young grouper and snappers. There were stunning bright corals in a rainbow of colours. A curious young turtle came to check us out as much intrigued by us as we by it.
But despite all the beauty and mystery of the Kittiwake the high point of the dive was undoubtedly my first encounter with a shark in the wild!
As we explored the reef we spotted a nurse shark and against all sense we gave chase.
The hunter became the hunted.
But rather than fleeing the shark slowed and we swam with him, just feet away from a sleek apex predator. At 1.6 meters in length he was the size of a tiger with the same unmistakable grace and power.
Only unlike a visit to a zoo nothing separated us. No fence. No cage. Nothing.
Meet the oximoronically named Kiki.
He matched our pace for a few minutes and with an effortless flick of his tail he was gone.
We just hung there wide eyed and thrilled. Gradually we resumed our dive heading back the way we had come. Then a movement out of the corner of my eye and there he was again powering towards the group every inch a shark. Sleek lines, muscle and power heading right at me. Pouncing. I held my breath as he rushed. His tail lashed in an unmistakable sinuous fluid motion.
It was like a moment in a film and while I knew logically I was in no danger the visceral reaction was real. Time slowed. I watched his approach like an out-of-body experience. Heart in my mouth.
Our eyes locked.
At the last second he turned parallel to me about three feet away and slowed instantly to a glide and we swam together like that man, boy and beast. Just incredible, I am still buzzing, what an amazing privilege. Then after what seemed like forever and no time he finally took his leave and resumed his endless hunt of the blue.
Under an Endless Sky 