Sharks

“There might be sharks,” he told us. “If there are, they might come within 10 or 15 feet of you, just stay calm and enjoy them. They are majestic.”

I gulped and gripped the edge of my lawn chair.

“Now, if one of the guide flicks his light back and forth, then that is time to get in the boat and get out of here,” he said with the light of the fire shining on his features in a harrowing way.

As I had gone spear fishing for my first time earlier in the day, and come back with a reef fish about the size of my hand that was tasty to eat on the fire, I figured I was up to the challenge. The group of people who wanted to go was too big to fit in one boat so I got stuck going in the second shift.

I watched the first boat go off into the starry night and sat in my hammock, awaiting my turn. The minutes crept by and I felt myself dosing off to the gentle lapping of the lagoon. When the first group came back it was close to 10:30 at night and I was considering sitting the trip out.

Plus all of the waiting had done a good job of marinating my fear of losing an arm or leg to a curious shark.

Finally, as the second group was getting ready to leave, I rallied myself to the idea of going out into a reef at night, spearing fish so their blood would be dispersed near roaming sharks and seeing what it was like to be out at sea in the dead of night. I used the logic of, ‘if I don’t do this now, I will kick myself later.’

The ride out to the spot was amazing. The stars overhead were more plentiful and bright than any nightscape I had seen in my life and the wake of the boat glowed green as phosphorescing algae got misplaced.

I didn’t speak the whole way out. I was too busy swallowing my Adam’s apple.

When we finally got out there, after stopping and starting many times to avoid the high reef heads, our guide started pairing us off with Marshallese. By luck of the draw I got a guy about my age with a sick sense of humor named Caleb.

“Ohhhhh, black tip sharks, white tip sharks,” he said to me in his best Halloween voice.

I decided to ignore the joke and laugh it off, the first group to go had not seen any sharks, and I hoped that I would not either.

Splash, into the water we went.

We were both carrying spears, but Caleb had the light, so I followed him as we poked along the reef shelf.

The first place we went was to the edge of the shelf where it sharply dropped off to utter blackness. On the way there, swimming through water no more than four feet deep, Caleb spotlighted a fish for me. I snapped him up on my first shot so things were looking good.

Right when we got to the edge though Caleb swung his flashlight down into the dark water and there, cruising with sanguine back and forth swishes of his tail was a black tip reef shark. It was about four to six feet long (hard to be exact under water) and he looked, well, absolutely majestic.

Caleb tried to scare me again by making low moaning noises, but for some reason, which I completely cannot explain, it didn’t bother me, and I was just happy to have seen one.

For the next half an hour or so Caleb and I teemed up to spear a multitude of fish across the reef. He would spotlight a fish, slow and lackadaisical due to the time of night, and I would try and skewer it. When I missed (often) he would grab it with the business end of his spear.

By the time that we got back to the boat we had a belt absolutely brimming with fish. We headed back to the shore and I regarded the stars and the glowing water.

Back at the camp our guides taught us which fish we could eat raw and so I chewed on the raw fish I had caught not an hour before, laughing with the Marshallese as they made fun of my hesitation.

That night as I swayed to sleep in my hammock, the image of the shark swept threw my mind…

The love you give comes back in the end.
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