Travel Sydney

Get Out of the Cage

Swimming with sharks in Australia

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Under water, no one can see you piss your pants.

When I was twenty-six I was a masochist. Once I smelt my own fear, I had to experience it. This exercise in manufactured courage bought me a one-way plane ticket across the Pacific, and now my masochism was lowering me into a tank full of maneaters.

Sort of.

A Sand-tiger shark is perfectly capable of eating a human being, but it seems they’ve decided against it. Unprovoked attacks in the ocean are rare, and a diver has never been attacked by a Sand-tiger shark in the Manly Sea Life Sanctuary, where sharks swim with humans every day except Christmas.

Nevertheless, these are twelve-foot-long, seven-hundred-pound predators. There’s a first time for everything.

“I think I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass.” — Matt Hooper, Jaws

My arms quiver as I descend into the tank. It’s too easy to imagine a monstrous mouth waiting below, eager to enjoy my ankles as appetizers. I want to quit, to squirm out of my wetsuit and retreat to the nearby Hemingway-themed bar, where nobody knows I’m a coward.

There are only two things keeping me from embracing my inner wimp, and they’re both wearing bikinis. Two beautiful young women have also offered themselves up as potential shark bait today. Seeing as how they refused my chivalrous offer — ‘Ladies first?’ — they are now watching me go under. There’s a fair chance they think I’m a real man — a true Chuck Norris, who fearlessly slips into the water knowing he has chain mail for chest hair.

If one of these sharks turns hangry, these exceptional female specimens assume I’ll sacrifice a forearm to save them. I will do no such thing, but they don’t have to know that. Not yet . . .

As my head descends into the shark soup, the water muffles the constant hum of humanity. The only sound inside the aquarium is my breath through the regulator, a meditative in and out. The careful mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium settles into my bloodstream, washing over my brainstem, silencing the primordial screams.

Our dive instructor told us what to expect. “You won’t see the sharks at first,” she said. “They’ll scatter when we step into the water. Big fraidy-cats, but they’ll get their spunk back and start circling us. Each circle gets a little bit tighter, and a little bit tighter, until finally, they’ll be brushing right up against ya. Just remember: keep your hands to yourself. Especially around the turtles. Lucy bit a finger off last year.”

Keep my hands to myself? What am I going to do, scratch behind their ears? Do sharks even have ears?

The girls are in the tank now, and the four of us settle on top of the observation tube, where guests can get close to these creatures without ever getting wet. Sounds downright sane, doesn’t it?

I see a giant turtle, the notorious finger-biter, but Lucy’s presence only reassures me. ‘If this woolly dope can survive alongside sharks for twenty years, surely I will be safe for the next thirty minutes.’

A manta-ray swims overhead, her body so big that it simulates a solar eclipse. When she glides past the tank lights up again. There they are, at the edge of my vision. Teeth.

Sand-tiger sharks have the exact mouth that haunts my dreams. I’m staring at a row of serrated incisors, designed with meat like mine in mind, but somehow I am miraculously unmenaced.

Before me are nothing more than seven-hundred-pound puppies, the golden retrievers of the Tasmanian Sea. I find myself inching towards them, reaching out to gesture them in, trying to make friends with man’s ancient adversary.

The dive instructor grabs my hand. She shakes her head, putting her hands up against her chest, miming for me to do the same. I can’t believe it. I just tried to pet a shark.

A family of four stares up at me from inside the tube, their faces stuck in fright. They can’t believe there are people in the presence of these monsters. I wave, but they only point furiously as a shark sneaks over my shoulder. I laugh; I shrug. My old fears live in their hearts now.

An hour before I took this picture, I was terrified of sharks. Call it a revelation, or perhaps my oxygen wasn’t mixed right, but either way: I didn’t piss my wetsuit. Forevermore, when my mind wanders to the ocean, it shall do so with less dismay.

As for the bikinied beauties, they were clearly impressed with my transformation. So impressed that they were simply too intimidated by my rugged hardihood to accept my invitation to have a drink with me at the Hemingway bar.

The moral of the story? Swim with sharks. Pet tarantulas. Jump out of a plane with a parachute. Pierce your nose bridge. Sing at an open mic. Fly to Japan. Ask him out on a date.

Fear is a cage that narrows the world. Get out of the cage. Survive what scares you.

Then tell your story at supper.

More of me?

Less of me? Be sure to check out this ode to the window seat by Nicholas Colombo: