Sharks Alive!

My obsession with underwater malarkey is being nicely fed right now by the BBC2 programme "Shark Therapy". It's hosted by Tanya Streeter - who, in her former life as Tanya Dailey - went to the same boarding school as me in the south of England. She was always at home in the water.

Tanya is the ladies' world champion freediver, and does some really great sub-aqua stuff on telly. In this show, she's getting used to diving with sharks. At first, she's freediving with five-six foot reef sharks. I noted at this point that her diving kit - silver bodysuit and dark fins and mask - made her look rather like - well - a shark. I hoped there wouldn't be any cases of mistaken identity.

Thankfully, when she started heading out to find the big boys - lemons, then tigers - her shark hunting expert (as in finding, not killing) advised her a) to use scuba and b) to wear all black. He seemed to be saying "stop dressing like a goddamn shark". So, Tanya gets in, and after some mask issues, becomes at peace with these huge animals.

Watching her do this reminds me - to a much lesser extent - of my own shark experience on my last holiday. I went snorkelling off the beach in Cayman. The missus was resolutely tanning, so I headed out alone. I'm not afraid of the water in any way, and swam out about 150-200 metres from the coast.

We'd seen a nurse shark flash past us when we'd been snorkelling on a finger of reef even closer to the shore, the day before. I knew they were in the area. Locals had also told us that this was breeding season - many sharks were in the waters now, taking the benefit of the upwelling of warm, nutrient-enriched water that comes to the surface around mountainheads like Cayman at that time of year in the Caribbean.

I was hoping that I might see one, maybe two sharks. I was rewarded with eight. Three large females, two or three smaller males, and a couple of pups. I think they spotted me with as much shock as I spotted them. If I hadn't turned around, I'd never have seen them. Immediately, they went into wagon-train defensive drill - they stopped, and began to circle, the large, protective females on the outside, the males and pups on the inside of the ring. And slowly, their jet fighter tails sweeping steadily from side to side, their dead, black eyes focussed entirely on you, they circle.

Suddenly, the rush of adrenaline. Fight or flight neurotransmitters coursing through my brain, my body. Should I panic? Should I scarper? Should I stay stock-still? I gazed at them, wondering what to do - mildly paralysed. I haven't felt fear like that in a long time. Then I worried that my fear was like a ruddy great smell advert to these creatures - that I was announcing my nervous state, loudly.

In the end, I decided to act casual - like I wasn't really interested in them. I suppose I did the sub-aqua equivalent of nicking an apple from the market-stall, and then sauntering off, whistling to yourself. Once the group of sharks saw that I wasn't coming for them, that I was just another pedestrian, they broke from their circle and swam away from me, out to sea. As you can imagine, I was determinedly heading in the opposite direction.