I was rather reminded of an old episode of Father Ted this week. The one where the eponymously named Priest attempts to explain ‘perspective’ to his intellectually challenged sidekick and friend, Father Dougal.

The conversation involved cows. Dougal thought a pair of cows that the pair could see from their caravan window were very small. Ted was trying to explain that they were normal sized cows but far away. This distinction was lost on Dougal who just became progressively more confused.

Small and near or big but far away? No clue. ‘Perspective’ it seemed, much to Ted’s frustration, was beyond Dougal’s comprehension.

In my case however it wasn’t cows.

Under normal circumstance I am pretty good at judging size and scale but I have discovered that there are times when the normal rules, gained through years of experience, don’t apply.

It had been a busy, long and quite stressful couple of weeks with lots going on at work. Too much to do, so much to cope with. It all seemed too big.

But today it was Sunday and Mothers’ Day. To celebrate and to try to have a break I took Victoria and our friend and dive buddy, Cissy, up to the East End for a boat dive and lunch.

We jumped onto the boat and we set off over the opal coloured water. Out through a gap in the reef and into the true blue of the deep-sea. Flying fish zipped alongside the boat their silver wet wings glistening as they flew parallel to us. The sun sparkled on the Caribbean Sea and the breeze whipped our hair. Stunning and just right for Mother’s Day and a break from it all.

After about twenty minutes we reached our dive site. Kitted up we stepped off the back of the boat one at a time and into sixty feet of water.

As I waited at the surface for the rest of the group a four foot barracuda circled me inquisitively. A big fish sleek and torpedo like. No more than five feet away. His proximity to me and the fact he was between myself and a couple of other divers in my group made it very easy to estimate his size.

A big fish. Near by.

We took each other’s measure. We agreed we were each quite interesting but probably not dinner and with that the big fish slipped down into the deep water.

With everyone now in the water we followed the barracuda down and descended to the sea floor.

A green sea turtle followed us down, curious to see where we were going. She kept her distance staying about 30ft out from the group. Just a baby only about a foot and a half in length.

A little animal. Far away.

As a group (12 of us) we headed due east towards the wall passing through the coral reef that sat between us and the Cayman Trench. We swam through a gently sloping coral garden. A strange alien place of odd shaped ‘plants’ and ‘trees’ painted weird colours. Hues of purple, blue and yellow. The water was really clear and we could see for a long way. The colours around us were vivid.

We moved through the reef following its gentle slope down to the lip of the ‘Drop Off‘.

As we reached the cliff edge the sea bed dropped away steeply until the wall disappeared into the inky black blue endless night below. True dark. True deep.

We moved out over the void and hung in space for a while before following the cliff edge along the coral face. To our right the cliff and its denizens were near by and it was easy to judge their different sizes. But to our left the sheer immensity of the drop, clarity of the water and the distance we could see out into the featureless deep made scale more difficult to judge.

We swam 100ft below the surface transfixed by the beauty.

As we swam a flicker in my peripheral vision. Up out of the deep came a sleek predatory shape. Sliding up from darkness a silhouette of effortless power moving unerringly upwards. Growing.

The shadow resolved itself into a pelagic shark. Its shape instantly recognisable. A deep sea shark, an open water predator. A design millions of years old the perfect hunter here in its own element.

And this is where perspective comes into play.

With no way to judge distance there was no way to judge size. I found myself trying to work out if it was a big shark a long distance away or a medium-sized shark close by.

If it was between 20ft and 50ft away then it was a ‘modest‘ 5ft long shark. However if it was between 50ft and 75ft away then it was easily 10 foot long. A BIG shark!

Small and near by or big but far away?

Perspective. I tried to puzzle it out, trying to understand the threat. Just how much danger did this animal pose?

Then instinct took hold.

The familiar automatic response that is the natural reaction to finding oneself in the presence of an apex predator in its natural environment.

A reflex as old as time itself. An ancient instinct. One that we can no more control than we can the turning of the tide.

There 100ft down rational thought and reason ceased and nature took hold. A primal urge kicked in.

We all swam towards the shark.

As a group we turned and moved further out over the deep towards the ancient hunter.

Programmed by millions of years of survival and savagery. A creature of unthinking instinct. It in turn reacted. Its tail twitched and under its slick grey skin its muscular body rippled. It turned, its path now matching ours.

It totally ignored us. Unfazed by our presence it began to casually swim along the cliff face parallel to us now.  It now flanked us. Between us and the deep.

Matching our course along the reef face it swam effortlessly. Where we were ungainly and slow it was all grace and power.

It glided along while we tried to keep up completely in awe. The gap between us never closed. 30ft or 60ft? No real way to judge. No way to know.

I really do not have the skill with words to describe just how stunning that shark was.

Power personified. No doubting from its design what it was made for.

Utterly beautiful and what a memory. Hanging over the void 100ft down with a deep-sea predator.

It stayed with us for a few minutes before causally flicking its tail. Accelerating effortlessly away it slid once again back into the inky blue deep and gone.

A big shark far away, or a modest sized shark near by? I don’t know.

I do know it was a privilege, for an instance, to swim with this magnificent creature.

Oh and I think I now understand how poor Dougal felt.

A Caribbean Black Tipped Reef Shark this one may be bigger or smaller than the one we saw…

We surfaced elated. Chattering about all we had seen, the drop off, the coral and of course our shark. The weeks worries forgotten somewhere down there in the deep, the stress of the week washed away. Forgotten or at least put in its rightful place.

See perspective.

As for Victoria and Cissy? They had a lovely Mothers’ Day.