I grew up living near the Great Lakes. It was not until much later in life that I saw my first shark. The shop I was diving with at the time had told us to expect that we would see a shark or two on the dive. We did see a shark, but he took one look at us open circuit divers and swam the other way. Before his tail had completely disappeared into the distance, I thought well that wasn’t too bad. That sighting was over 20 years ago and since that time I’ve seen many varieties of sharks, but seeing a shark never gets old for me. And no, it is not because in my day job I’m a lawyer and I have enjoyed professional curtesy with the sharks in the water.

Before last year, I used to think oh there’s a nurse shark. Whoopi, a very docile animal.

Well, last year I was on a night dive where we knew nurse sharks would be feeding. In the briefing we were told to stay off the bottom which was only maybe 35 feet below. So we stayed in the mid-water about 15 feet off the bottom. I’m glad I stayed off the bottom. What I observed were a handful of nurse sharks pounding every hole in the reef looking for a sleeping fish to swallow. I have been in a cage and watched bull sharks go after fish bits that were tossed into the water near the cage. The bulls sharks were not that much different from the vigor with which the nurse sharks crashed the holes in the reef to find fish. The thing that startled me the most was the speed at which the many attacks were launched by the nurse sharks. Had Micheal Phelps been in one of the holes in the reef he would not have stood a chance of out swimming the nurse sharks.

In the murky water of the harbor where the shark cage was it was stunning how fast the bull sharks came at the cage and how careful I was at keeping everything well inside the cage.

Then there was the dive where we were watching and taking pictures of great hammerheads swim in water that the visibility was not great. After having visibility that was awesome a few days before, I began to feel very uncomfortable when I realized that a 12 foot hammerhead could swim up behind me while I was focused on a similar sized hammerhead in front of me and missed the one that was on my blind side. Glad my buddy was watching out for me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t attribute some ill will to sharks. They just do what they have been doing for hundreds of millions of years. They are a top predator and they are just looking for a meal. They are intelligent predators and they are designed to move through the water far more efficiently than we are. And, they do an excellent job of cleaning off the the sick or otherwise unhealthy reef critters.

Of course as top predators, the existence of sharks in a particular dive site I always take as a good sign that the reef is healthy. That is, if the top predator is doing well then all of the fish and creatures that are on lower levels of the food chain must be in at least decent shape otherwise there would be little in the food chain to support the top predator.