Selachophobia mostly conquered*

OK – I try to keep these posts funny – but sometimes when cool stuff happens, funny or not, I gotta report.

Went to Mozambique over the weekend to take my open-water qualifying dives to complete the SCUBA course I started a couple of weeks ago.

At 2am Friday morning, Chris, my divemaster, picked me up in his bakkie, along with his sister, her guy, and friend Karen. Driving through the night, we arrived at a jammed border crossing at about 11:30am, and were finally at Ponta d’Ouro, Mozambique around 1pm.

Apparently, taking credit cards to Mozambique is pointless, and there are no ATM’s, and crossing the border costs 172 of your last 300 rand. No big deal. Who needs to eat lunch when you’re wearing a bikini for 4 days straight?

First thing to note upon entry to Mozambique is the kids running along the road yelling for you to throw sweets from the car. Most of them are little kids, but every once in a while you get some 14 year old whose voice has just changed grunting “Sweets.” Classic.

Friday night – chaos. A simple trip to the beach had resulted in my only bathing suit malfunctioning. (Read: the little plastic D-ring that joins the front and back halves of the bottom snapped as I was sitting on the beach. Slightly awkward situation. More awkward had I not noticed it before I stood up). Table-mates consulted at dinner. Puzzled looks ensue until offending bikini bottoms brought from tent to provide visual.

Now - you know that coloured nylon ribbon you put on birthday presents, and then you take the scissors and scrape it so it curls real pretty? Well, they use different colours of that stuff to tie on your scuba equipment so it doesn’t get confused with another diving school when you stay at one of these dive camps. My group was using blue.

Homemaker tip: aforementioned nylon ribbon can ALSO be used as emergency bathing suit repair, should you be staying in a one-horse town that doesn’t take credit cards, and therefore does not have emergency bathing suit purchase options. Be sure to tie the right knot to avoid surprises post-wetsuit removal. Quick-witted divemasters are also an asset when they point out that instead of blue ribbon, you should use pink, because it matches your suit better. Clever people, these divers.

Happy to report that nylon ribbon held up the entire weekend. Take that, Project Runway.

Saturday morning – my first open-water dive.

Pretty much fully panicked and kicking myself that I hadn’t re-read any of the course material, I listened carefully as Chris recited the skills we’d be reviewing in the ocean. Now was probably not the time to back out, but frankly, this whole breathing underwater thing, in the ocean, with sharks, was seeming like poor planning.

Some minor issues on the surface trying to convince brain that sinking 16m down was a good idea. OK, actually, full on panic, complete with coughing, sputtering, and inhaling of sea-water. Thank goodness no-one was left on the surface to see that little episode. Which also was disconcerting, because that meant I was alone floating in the sea. Luckily at that point, divemaster came back, grabbed my hand, and dragged me down.

Once at the bottom, everything was cool again. Actually – it was frickin awesome. We did a couple of skills, then got to enjoy the rest of the dive.

Dives two and three proceeded similarly, minus the panic-attacks, with a few more skills being tested each time.

Dive four is the final qualifying dive. You need to navigate with a compass, and hover. No big deal – at this point, I wasn’t worried at all. Plus, I’d just practiced navigating in the parking lot. Easy.

As we climbed into the back of the bakkie to get taken to the launch, we heard from another group coming back in that a whale shark had been spotted in the bay. We made for the water, encountering a massive jam in the parking lot on the way, delaying us. Lindsey was beside herself – she’s been diving for years, and has never got the chance to swim with a whale shark. Finally hustling into the boat, we headed out. Skipper Wayne and divemaster Chris kept watch for the shark. Only a few minutes out, they spotted it.

“Masks and flippers on. Weight belts on” yelled Wayne. I quickly consulted someone as to why we would willingly throw ourselves into the ocean wearing weightbelts, but not air tanks. Apparently our wetsuits are too buoyant to allow us to free dive without weights. Not entirely sure that freediving near a shark was my first choice, I followed suit and put on my weight belt.

“OK – everybody in the water. Stay away from its tail, and don’t touch it” yelled Wayne.

And for some reason, I jumped.

For the first few seconds, all I saw was dark green water as I swam in the general direction of the shark.

Then, all at once, a huge shadow was in front of me. A whale shark, swimming serenely, yet surprisingly quickly. I gulped, then started swimming as fast as I could to keep up. Now thankful for the weight belt, I dove down to swim beside it. This thing was huge.

A word on whale sharks: this one was small at 6-8m, with most of the bigger ones getting up to the 20m mark. They don’t eat people, only plankton, and they are the biggest known fish in the sea.

I couldn’t really keep up to it as it swam, and had to back off as the tail came swinging lazily at me. As it changed direction, I took a chance and swam in an arc to the left. Not too long after, it came round, heading straight at me. And then it glided by, swimming past us again, and out of range.

Huge grins on everyone’s’ faces as we clambered out of the water.

At this point, my brain kicked in, after shutting itself down in preparation for sure death, and I reviewed the fact that I’d just jumped into the water after a shark.

No issues on the 4^th dive – navigation skills checked out, and we cruised the reef, spotting an octopus, sea turtle, and a bunch of other fish that some people were pretty excited about. Frankly, I’m still on the “hey – I can breath underwater” stage of diving. I’m sure once I know what the fish are, I’ll get excited about them too. Either that, or like antelope-y things, I'll never care that much about some of those fish.

The dive over, we headed onto the boat to return to shore.

Not quite.

A couple of humpback whales had been spotted a few hundred meters more offshore, and Wayne was going to find them for us. In the distance, we could see a mother and calf breaching and playing in the surf. As we got closer, they turned and headed in our direction. We watched for a while, then decided to head home. The whales had other ideas, and scared the crap out of Wayne coming up literally feet from the boat.

Whale-watching now officially over, we turned the boat and headed for shore.

Not so fast.

Now, because it was one of those days, a group of dolphins swam by.

Everyone looked at eachother.

“OK folks, masks and fins on. Stay in a group, and in you go” Wayne commanded, as we leapt into the water for the third time this dive.

He took the boat in a wide circle around us, and the dolphins played in its wake, zooming through our group, under and around us, squeaking as they went.

Once they’d had enough, we clambered into the boat, now wondering if there was anything left to show up.

I briefly considered retiring from diving so I could quit while I was ahead.

Pretty sweet way to spend a weekend.

Now I gotta look into an underwater camera.

*Note: Actual conquering of selachophobia not entirely proven yet. The true test will be when I encounter some of the ones that could actually eat me, like great whites. Getting thumped with a giant whale shark tail could be bad, but not as bad as getting your arms ripped off. Great whites tend to do the latter.

No, they're not my pictures - but they're pretty cool shots of divers and whale sharks.