After my exchange semester in Malaysia in 2013, I and my husband decided, that we should do some more traveling. Since I’ve already spent several months in Southeast Asia, I decided that we should go even further, meaning Oceania. I had two destinations in my mind, New Zealand and Fiji. My next story happened in Fiji, on Nacula island which is one of the famous Yasawa islands.
Nacula was our final stop before heading back home and our last chance to do some scuba diving. We couldn’t miss the opportunity, after all, diving in Fiji was our goal all the time. After asking around a bit, we decided to take two diving trips from the resort next to ours. Their diving site selection was quite wide and their staff was very friendly. And yes, there was one site that got us very excited right away - shark feeding.
After some arrangements, the staff told us that we would have our shark-feeding dive on the next day. They also offered us that they could pick us up from our resort before diving, and drop off afterward. Good deal!
On the next day, everything went according to the plan. A boat picked us up and took us to the diving center, where we received all our equipment and got ready for diving. However, the surprise part happened on the boat when we were heading to the site. I asked about sharks and how big they are… I never thought that I would receive such an answer. According to our diving instructor, sharks would be approximately 3 - 4 m big. WHAAAAT?? No, he wasn’t kidding.
Our instructor was amused when he saw my jaw dropping. I mean, I knew there would be sharks but I didn’t realize that they would be that big! I saw some relatively small reef sharks and a glance of a small leopard shark before, and I guess, I was expecting something like that. I thought that there will be more of them and they would be slightly bigger but not almost 4m! My heart started to pump faster but I ordered myself to calm down, I couldn’t back off anymore. The instructor told us that there certainly would be bull sharks, he was quite positive about blue, lemon, white and reef sharks as well. I think he saw me being a bit nervous and tried to say something that would calm me down. He said: ‘’Sharks are deeply misunderstood creatures. Think about them as they were dogs, if not provoked they usually won’t attack. They are not interested in human flesh, they prefer fat fish.’’ At first, I heard only ‘’sharks… usually… attack… interested in human flesh’’. I have to admit, I was very nervous.
When we arrived at the site, my husband and I jumped into the water and put our masks on. Then it was time to descend to the bottom of the sea and my heart pumped like crazy. Naturally, it is very common that people are nervous before diving with the sharks and that’s why there was a rope leading to the bottom. Being nervous when diving usually disturbs descending and staying on the bottom. In my case, I would have resurfaced like a cork.
While holding the rope and slowly descending, I saw the first shark. Surprisingly, I wasn’t that nervous as I thought I would be. Quite soon, I saw another shark and another and another… There was so many of them! And they were big! I can’t explain that properly, but when I am diving, I feel very comfortable. Even when diving with sharks. Somehow, I feel like I’m very present in the moment, away from other people and the rest of the world, just listening to my own breathing. That happened this time too, even though there were other people and those magnificent creatures surrounded us.
Well, okay, there was a couple of pretty itchy moments. For example, when I was standing on the bottom of the sea and staring at a lemon shark on my left, a couple of meters away from me, a bull shark on my right side surprised me by coming, in my opinion, too close. When I noticed that bull shark, it was probably 1,5 m away from me and swimming straight towards me. The greyness in it’s small, cold eyes were shivering when it glanced at me and kept swimming. There was nothing else between us, except for one rope, that I squeezed very hard with my hands while staring back at the bull shark. That moment last seconds but felt like an eternity! Finally, there was only 30 cm between us when the shark decided to turn away. What an adrenaline rush!
The instructor was right though, sharks weren't interested in people. They were way more interested in fishbones from the restaurant, that instructors had in containers.
I didn’t take that picture of the shark myself, because I didn’t have a waterproof camera, which I deeply, deeply regret. I would never do that mistake again!
Back to the story. After ascending to the surface, I realized that I’ve had the most incredible experience so far. My husband thought the same. For the rest of the trip, we spoke about this, reliving it over and over again. Many things happened after that moment. We traveled together after this, we graduated from University, we have a child (who is the most important person to us now), and still, we both remember and appreciate this diving experience. Somehow, it became our own unique thing.
That day, the sunset could not have been any less beautiful!
xoxo, Lindiry
