We pulled up to a dusty road near a public beachfront in
Playa del Carmen. Little boys with
dirty feet and Kool Ade stained mouths played in the sand near where their
fisherman fathers brought in their catch.
A heavy lidded bored looking woman sat at a cart selling terrifying
looking food. A leathery looking
tramp looked at us with a smile of broken teeth, amused at what we were about
to do. Alvaro, a man that I had
dove with about ten months earlier, gathered us together as we struggled into
our wet suits. “OK! Listen up! We are going to move fast! We are going to drop down to the bottom quickly but not too
quickly. Understand? You are going to be weighted down so
you are going to drop. We want to
get down to the bottom before the shark gets any ideas. OK? So get down fast… but not too fast!’.
With that we all got moving hauling our gear to the small
boat anchored just off shore. I
had gone to great lengths to be here.
I have been fascinated with sharks since I saw the movie “Jaws” as a
kid. The idea that I could swim in
the ocean right next to them without a cage was too good to pass up. The fact that they are full-grown bull
sharks just ratcheted the whole thing up a few notches. As most of you are probably not well
versed with bull sharks, let me give you a quick rundown.
The bull shark is widely considered to be the most dangerous
shark on the planet. This is due
to the fact of them being large, very aggressive, prone to habitat near
populated tropical beaches, and of the habit of attacking almost anything. They are part of the Big Three along
with Great Whites and Tiger Sharks as being the three species most likely to
attack humans. They are between 7
and 11 feet long and max out at about 500 pounds. One would think that it would be an unbelievably bad idea to
put oneself in the water with one of these, much less with multiple full grown
adult bulls expected to be circling.
I would like to point out that I’m not crazy. I take calculated risks. The bull sharks come into the Playa del
Carmen area around November and cruise off shore for a few months during their
mating season. They tend to back
off their aggressive behavior. The
belief is that the bull sharks attack humans by accident thinking that they are
another type of their food. For
example, a friend of a friend of mine almost lost his leg while swimming off a
boat. The sharks saw him flopping
around on the surface and thought “What luck! An injured seal!”.
The shark nailed him in the leg and then let go when he thought “Hey…
That’s not seal!”. Now the down
side to this guy was that by the time the shark realized this he had clamped
down on his leg with a four foot wide mouth of razor sharp teeth with 478 pound
bite force. To put that in
perspective, bull sharks can bite sea turtles in half. “Sorry man! My bad! Sorry
about that leg! My fault! 100%!”
Alvaro has made this dive many times. My thought is that if he has done this
over and over, I’m sure I can do it once.
Of course, Alvaro also dove in the water with Great Whites feeding on
seals in La Jolla with a video camera, so maybe he wasn’t the best guy the have
my gauge of acceptable risk ratios.
Regardless, the whole idea seemed so fucking gnarly, I had to have the
experience. I knew people that had
dove with sharks while in cages, but I’ve never heard of anyone a) diving with
bull sharks and b) doing so without any protection whatsoever. It’s like running around a pride of
lions nude. It’s really a bad
idea.
We got on the boat.
It was a small group. Jung
was a very talkative Chinese national that was much more focused on his camera
than following instructions. I had
the sneaking suspicion that Jung would fail to heed a basic part of the plan
and get bitten in half in front of me.
Not having much of an attachment to the man, it did interest me in
seeing what that would look like in person. The father son duo of Adolfo and Adolfo rolled up in a
Porsche McCann Turbo. The son was
probably 16 or so, and my gut told me I was a better swimmer than he was, thus
my plan of not out swimming the sharks but out swimming Adolfo Jr. was
formed. When the bull sharks went
into a feeding frenzy feasting on Jung’s leaking corpse, I’d ascend quickly as
Adolfo Jr. got pulled down behind me.
Sorry kid. It was a good
run.
Alvaro led the dive and his helper Favio served as our wingman. The plan was to drop down to the sandy
bottom at 70 feet, form a line with the current to our shoulder. The key was to get to the bottom
quickly so as not to look like an injured animal flopping around. Get to the sand and don’t move
around. Alvaro took the right wing
in front of us, and Favio the left wing.
Alvaro would open a little bucket of fish guts, let some seep out, and
the sharks would come see what the smell in the current was all about. They would cruise by us and check us
out. If they started to get too
aggressive, we’d bug out. I
assumed by ”too aggressive”, that meant when Jung got bit in half.
I would like to point out to anyone that has ever vacationed
in Playa Del Carmen that about 1000 feet off shore in Nov-Jan there are so many
bull sharks you would completely lose your shit. When the boat stopped, we were well within site of a packed
resort beach. If those people on
that beach had any idea of what we were doing, they’d never have gone in the
water. The boat stopped and almost
immediately we all flopped back frogman style into the water. In my head the only thing I could think
of was “get down fast but not too fast…
What the fuck does that mean?”.
Right away Jung is having problems. In my experience anyone that is totally
fixated with cameras is never in tune with what is actually happening. They are always a disaster on a dive. Every single time. So there’s Jung in the water. He has no idea how to operate his gear
and isn’t descending. Of
course. Adolfo Jr. is dicking
around at about 10 feet. Meanwhile
I’m by myself at about 35 feet dropping down while pressurizing and start to
notice a bull shark about nine feet long twenty feet below my feet. Holy mother of fuck. That thing is fucking huge. Guys? Guys? Adolfo
Sr. starts to get in the game and he gets to the bottom about 20 long seconds
after I do. I don’t see
Alvaro. I don’t see Favio. All I know is I’m not going to start
swimming around like an asshole and get my leg bit off.
When I learned how to dive a Jamaican guy helped teach
me. “Hey man… Don’t worry
man. Just relax. You got everything you need. Don’t ever freak out man.” Alvaro appeared above me to my
right. Jung and Adolfo Jr. got
down to the bottom. We made our
line. Alvaro opened the
bucket. It couldn’t have been more
than 10 seconds later the biggest fish I have ever seen swam three feet away
from me. Yup. That’s a bull shark all right. 300 pounds? Nine feet long?
Without question it is the most impressive thing I have ever seen in the
ocean. Powerful and graceful, it
is perfectly designed. It’s small
eye looks right at you as it effortlessly cruises next to you. This is his house and you are a
visitor. No one had to remind me
not to move around like an asshole.
“Me? No, I’m just a rock
over here… Nothing to see. Move
along. No need to give me that
eye.” Closer and closer they
come. Straight at you and then a
quick turn a couple feet before impact.
It’s hard not to give in to your base instincts and flee. It is very hard to put into words the
feeling that in an instant those creatures can tear you up and there’s really
nothing you can do about it.
If I can make a suggestion to you, if you ever get cut in
the ocean, get out of the water.
Each time Alvaro would open the bucket a crack, three to five massive
bull sharks would immediately respond out of nowhere to see what smelled so
good. One in particular with a
gash behind the dorsal fin was especially noteworthy. This was the largest of the group, probably ten feet and
400+ pounds. I don’t know if a
shark can be a wiseass, but this one certainly seemed like one. It would get so close passing by that I
could have grabbed it by the tail.
At one point 7 or 8 of them were circling us. I had to remind myself to keep my shit together when I’m
staring at “Gash Fin” in front of me and another 300 pounder would swim out of
my blind spot to the right. It
really felt as if we had lost some of the illusionary control of the situation
by that point. I couldn’t keep
track of all of them. I'm thinking “OK… I’ve
seen enough… Whattya say we go
back up to the boat guys?”.
The problem becomes surfacing. Being stationary on the sand, we don’t look like food to
them. Slowly ascending through
their playroom at 65-45 feet would change our profile. Jung and Adolfo Jr. had blown through
their gas and had to surface.
Favio grabbed them up into a group and they ascended when the sharks
made a brief exit. Adolfo Sr,
Alvaro and I still had 1500 on the tanks so we stayed down. This was when Alvaro decided to get a
little crazy and open the bucket enough so little fish guts seeped out and a
group of twenty small fish began to feed on it. With absolutely awe inspiring speed and force, one of the
larger bulls appeared from our left, accelerated as he rose and tore though the
group of fish clamping down on God knows how many of them. The strength and grace was
awesome. It was humbling,
terrifying and amazing. To put
into The King’s English, that fish can fuck you up. Time to go.
We waited until the coast was clear and ascended in a circle
looking out in our assigned direction.
A three minute safety stop at 15 feet took an eternity. Alavaro was excited and clenched my
hand screaming, “Yes!” through his mouthpiece while laughing. I wasn’t the only one that thought that
aggressive shit at the end was impressive I see. We saw about six bulls cruising the sandy bottom paying us
no attention. We got to the
surface and got in the boat quickly.
Jung was aggressively barfing off the side. Adolfo Jr. seemed happy but a little taken back by this odd
little Chinese man violently heaving.
I could feel the adrenalin coursing though me, something I didn’t really
notice in the water. Within a
couple moments we started the engine for the quick trip back to the beach.
Without question, this was one of the best things I have
ever done. It's everything I thought it would be, totally hardcore. I got to see something
almost no one else on the planet will or would even consider attempting. It was a test of courage; something one
doesn’t get the chance to do very often in modern life. It’s hard not to fall into a rut, to
let the normal shove you away from the extraordinary. Life is about experiences and testing limits. I’m going to try keep doing it until I
fail.
(That's me on the left...)
a true whiskey daredevil.
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