What does one tropical storm, meeting the one and only Samuel Gruber, doing my first work up on a reef
and nurse shark, my first shark dive, and learning how to fish for barracuda
all have in common? Everything I have experienced during my first month living
and working at the Bimini Biological Field Station (but believe me it doesn’t
stop there). The hardest part is verbally
encompassing all these amazing events and letting you in on the magic that the
shark lab offers. So where do we start?
Well it begins with thinking you and
your coworkers might be slightly insane. You’re there in the middle of the sea,
it seems that all you notice are your fins slowly dangling back and forth
underneath you and our heart rate beginning to increase. But cautiousness
doesn’t slip to far from consciousness. You
hold the line, prepare yourself, take notice of everyone else in the water, and
wait for the bait to get thrown. And one by one they begin to arrive…
Five reef sharks showed up during my first shark dive. That was the
first time I was in open water with a shark and it would take me .01 seconds to
do it again. They swim around, agile, might come close enough to caress your fin
but at the same time you just got close enough to touch theirs as well. Sure, I
called my mom later in the week and told her I had been on a shark dive and it
was entertaining to listen to her reaction, “What, are you guys insane?!” Yea
maybe, but how can you do this job if you aren’t (at least partially)? But
mainly it was about that sheer humbling feeling you get, the anxiety rush, and
the amazement of being in the water with an animal that’s close to 430 million
years old. To look at a living fossil, an evolutionary legend. It’s not about the bragging rights.
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| Caribbean Reef Sharks © Nick Luz |
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