Sharks - Rulers of the Ocean

Have you ever seen Jaws? Do you remember that blood-curdling scream as one of the girls was being attacked by the great white? That is how I felt as the sharks started to circle us. You could see the fear in our eyes. You could feel the ocean shudder as we all shook from excitement and trepidation. This is how most people feel about sharks. That is why researchers are trying their hardest to dispel all of the rumors about sharks. The only problem the researchers have is the local governments. They setup regulations banning people from coming in contact with any endangered animal. Sharks are not quite on the endangered list, but they are threatened by man. Until we find out everything we want to know about these animals we will be ignorant to their unique place in the balance of life. I wanted to know more about sharks, so I took the first step; I went to the ocean.

This part of our trip to Fiji was the main attraction. All of the other dives led up to this one. We were sitting at the bottom of a reef head, which was about 100 feet below the surface. As we descended, all we could see was this huge tornado of fish and sharks. One kind of fish, the jack, was huge. They were about a foot and a half tall, about six inches wide and about two feet long. There were also about 8 potato groupers. The potato grouper is about a foot long to about three feet long, sometimes weighing in at over 100 pounds. There were hundreds of fish. When we were settled on our perch, the show really began.

They came in from the deep blue abyss. Slicing their way through the ocean currents, they judged us with their grayish eyes as they passed. They were testing us, as they got closer every time. The sharks would come in and out of our field of view, passing inches over our heads, as they glided through our bubbles. We could see their scales they were so close to us. Every time they passed, I could feel them brush me with the water. Their tails were so strong that I was pushed over by the water that they moved. Their colors were as different as a person’s skin tones, from gray to blue for their upper bodies, but for their lower bodies it was an off white; almost gray.