Playing with Sharks . . .

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Last year, when I was on the Destiny getting my scuba diving certification, my South African friends would tell me how great the diving is in their country. It has always been part of my plan to go diving while here. I love diving, but it can be an expensive hobby. So while nearly every place I’ve been along the coast claims great diving and offer dive packages, I’ve waited to go to “the best” - The Aliwal Shoal. The Aliwal Shoal is about 40 kilometres south of Durban, near the town of Umkomaas. Jacques Cousteau himself rated it as one of the 10 best dive sites in the world. Thus why I picked that to be my dive spot for this trip.

Late last night, the Baz Bus dropped me off at the dive lodge, where my dives would be organized from and where I spent the night. The lodge was so quiet, I had the dorm to myself and there’s wireless internet! Though I had to be up early and I knew I’d need energy for the dive, between internet, my racing mind and nerves, I had little sleep.

7am, I was downstairs and getting suited up and equipped. Two girls from the Netherlands also were going out with me and then we had our dive master, “Skull”. From the lodge, we drove a couple kilometres down the beach to a river mouth. There, our boat was launched into the water, we hopped on and were off. Just getting out to sea was a bit of an adventure. The surf right by the shore was pretty high. So we were life jacketed up, gripping ropes, and BJ (our captain) maneuvered our way around, through and over the waves. Once past the surf, we were able to fly across the water, but the waves still had us flying and bouncing the whole 15 minute / 5 kilometre ride out. We reached the site, put on our gear and on BJ’s count, did a backward roll off the boat and into the water (my first!).

I have always been a nervous diver. I really enjoy diving and seeing things down there is incredible. But there is some part of my brain that just does not accept that it is okay, normal, natural or possible to breathe underwater. Getting past my nerves has always been my biggest challenge.

Today, when we were in the water and we all signaled to head down, first I couldn’t go down. My weights were off. Then, I started going down, just enough that my head was below the surface. And I panicked. Completely irrational survival instinct fight-or-flight-please-let-me-flight panic. Didn’t matter that I could breathe just fine with my gear, I was in panic mode. I raised my head above the water. Of course, BJ and Skull were checking on me. I assured them I was fine, just that I needed to calm myself down. I seriously wanted to just get back in the boat, give up, not do it . . . that’s the sort of panic I was feeling . . . again, totally irrational. It was like my logical brain was fighting to control this panic that came from nowhere. Somehow I managed to slow my breathing and shut down the panic. I decided to attempt to go down again.

The fear didn’t go away for awhile . . . Not only was I fighting with this instinctual “You can’t breathe here!” panic, but I felt so overwhelmed by my dive environment. It was so completely different than the spots I’ve dived before. Diving in the Caribbean, the water has always been remarkably clear, with outstanding visibility. The water was warm. The colour below the surface was always light blue. Here, it was good visibility (otherwise we wouldn’t go), but not nearly as far as I’ve been able to see before - I couldn’t see the bottom from the surface. The water is much cooler. But mainly, it was the colour - everything was a deep dark blue. It’s like before I’d been diving in aquariums or pretty swimming pools and today I was in the real ocean.

The spot we were at was 18 metres down. There was a bit of a clearing we went into and around the sides were caves. We spent some time exploring the area, looking at the coral. I was still fighting the urge to just swim straight back to the surface (which would actually be more unsafe than doing the full dive). I managed to calm myself a bit by giving myself things to focus on, things to look at and look for. I went along the sand at the bottom, looking at shells and stones and looking for the shark teeth that apparently can frequently be found down there.

Then it got exciting. For the next 30 minutes, it was just one incredible sight after another. And it was more than enough to give my brain something to focus on, and let go of the doubt in my body’s and equipment’s ability to keep me going. There was so much to see . . .

Of course there were fish, lots and lots of fish. Some were really lovely and pretty. Some were kind of just ugly and well, fishy. And there were some that were so big! Specifically, this one (later I learned it’s called a Potato Bass) was spotted kind of like a leopard and it was just so big . . . easily about the size of my torso.

There was a sea turtle. I love turtles. I’ve snorkeled with sea turtles in Barbados and seen huge ones at the turtle farm in Grand Cayman, but this turtle was bigger than any I’ve seen before. HUGE! It’s like everything out there was giant sized!

But there were little things too that were just as cool. Like a crab. You see crabs on beaches in various places, and of course you see them all the time in places that sell seafood. But coming across one at the bottom of the ocean made it cooler somehow.

We saw a stingray. An average medium-sized one. Stingrays are also something I’ve seen lots of, swimming in Grand Cayman at the “Stingray City” sandbar. And those ones are living out in the ocean wild, yet they’re also so tame, used to tourists holding and kissing and feeding them. This one today, just also seemed cooler somehow.

And we saw what the Aliwal Shoal is known for being a spot to see - sharks. Yes, I was hanging out at the bottom of the ocean with sharks. Specifically, ragged-tooth sharks. They’re not especially big, about the size of a dolphin, or my size for that matter! Over the course of the dive, we saw about four of them I think. One of the big touristy things to do here in South Africa, is to go cage diving/snorkelling with Great White Sharks. Now, I know ragged-tooth sharks aren’t Great Whites, but considering there’s no cage, just us in our scuba gear and a few sharks hanging out with us . . . I think it’s just as cool. I knew it was a possibility we’d see sharks (the dive spot we were at is called Raggie’s Cave - cause it’s where the sharks like to hang out), but I’d said that I was fine if none would be out today. But now, having seen them and lived to tell the tale, I’m glad they (or we?) came by.

But then, what I enjoyed the most . . . we saw dolphins! First, I could hear them. Most of the time you don’t hear anything down there, and the odd sound I did hear I had no idea what it was. The dolphins though, that was a sound I recognized. A moment after I heard them, we saw them. Directly above us, a group of about six dolphins were slowly swimming by. We just hung out there, looking up at them. They were gorgeous. Later in the dive, another one came by and this one dove down as deep as we were, then snagged and ate a fish, then did this little twisty spin before heading back up to the surface. It was graceful and beautiful.

Our dive was a total of 40 minutes. After which, we headed back to the surface, climbed aboard our boat, flew across the waves, maneuvered through the surf, went ashore and headed back to the lodge. We had a break for an hour or two at the lodge, where we had some food and hot drinks. (It was so cold today! Rainy, dreary . . . I know it’s not snow, but it still wasn’t pleasant weather to be outside and wet.) Then it was time for our second dive.

This time, a trio joined us: an Irish guy doing his dive training would be going out on his first dive, along with two other dive masters. So back out we went. For the second dive, we were at a shallower depth (12 metres) because of the intro diver. But it was still good. My anxiety stayed under control. I can’t claim that I was completely at ease or relaxed, but I managed to go down and stay down with panicking.

The second dive wasn’t quite as exciting with things to see. Lots of coral, lots of fish, mostly smaller ones now. Another sea turtle, much more “average” in size. I love the turtles! I could hang out with them for hours . . . There was a lobster which was really really cool. Similar to seeing the crab (except cooler), it’s just not something you normally get to see hanging out in the wild ocean. And this was a BIG one too! We swam above an eel, with it’s head popping out of it’s hole. Very cool. Then, at the very end, while we were hanging out at 5 metres (a safety stop you do at the end of a dive to help your body re-adjust), we could hear dolphins again. We could hear quite a few and they sounded really close. But, they didn’t appear.

We surfaced and as we were taking off our gear and passing it up onto the boat, we were talking about the non-appearance of the dolphins. And then we saw them - swimming across the surface, only a few feet away. There were at least a dozen of them. A great sight to finish off the dives.

And so that was my adventure on the Aliwal Shoal. I wish I had pictures from the dive to share . . . this is the first time I’ve been at a depth my waterproof camera could have handled too - but it was a loss to the mugging back in Port Elizabeth . . . Oh well. At the lodge, they had paintings of the different fish you often see and one of a map of the Shoal. They will have to do . . . then I’ve cheated a bit . . . I’ve thrown in some photos that I took at the aquarium at uShaka Marine World in Durban - but only of creatures I actually saw on the dive. For everything else, you’ll have to use your imaginations!

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Comments

[swills82]

Congrats
Glad you overcame your fear and were able to proceed. So jealous of your amazing dive. I'll add it to my list of places to go! Can't believe you saw dolphins! eeek.