written and photographed by Mary L. Peachin
Feb 1998, Vol. 2 No. 5
Standing on the scuba dive platform of the sixty three foot ” Bottom Scratcher,” I could see blue and mako sharks circling the boat. I signaled to the chain-suited dive master that I was ready to take a giant stride into the 3500-foot depth of the Pacific Ocean, twenty miles west of San Diego.
My “adrenaline junkie” persona superseded my role as a wife, mother, business-woman and community volunteer. I had signed a witnessed liability release saying, “scuba diving is dangerous, the open sea is a dangerous environment. The primary intent of the expedition is to attract dangerous and unpredictable sharks by baiting them. There may also be other animals and water conditions that are dangerous.” I’ve signed a few releases in my time, but this one certainly got my attention.
Mashing tuna in a plastic grate, the chum (bait) line drifted away from the boat, attracting sharks within seventeen minutes. As soon as the sharks arrived, we dropped two steel cages into the water. The “moment of truth” had arrived. Fully wet-suited with a hood, I wore an additional 25 pounds on my weight belt. The extra weight was added to create negative buoyancy, making it easier to stand in the cage. Other dive gauges had been removed to prevent any tangling during the entry or exit from the shark cage.
As I stood on the dive platform with regulator in my mouth, I could hear my own breathing. I knew the shark masters were monitoring my breathing as a safety precaution. During the trip to the dive site, the twelve of us had made a check out dive to practice entering and exiting the cage. This kind of diving is only for the experienced diver yet none of us had prior experience with caged shark diving.
Mark Thurlow, one of the two shark masters, did a 360 degree turn in the water to check for any sharks between the dive platform and the shark cage. I gave the OK circle hand signal and when Mark beckoned to me, I jumped into the frigid water.
I swam the twenty five yards as I descended fifteen feet to enter the shark cage. In the cold 60-degree water, I would have the opportunity to photograph sharks during two forty-five minute dives. Most of us had previously dived with reef and nurse sharks, but not with these frenetic pelagics that had been baited and attracted to the cages with tuna and mackerel bait.
It’s difficult to explain the attraction of shark diving to non-divers. I planned this San Diego shark diving trip because I thought it would be a good opportunity to become aware of my comfort level of diving with sharks– with the added safety of the cage. I was planning a trip to the Cocos Islands, south of Costa Rica, where I would spend a week diving with hammerhead sharks in open water.
As I would later discover, I was more comfortable in open water with elusive hammerheads. I preferred the freedom of swimming rather than the confinement of a cage. I didn’t like the enclosed feeling and swaying in the current while I was motionless in the frigid water with baited sharks in a feeding frenzy surrounding me.
Through my camera lens I observed the two shark masters, wearing twenty pound stainless steel neptunic shark suits developed by Jeremiah Sullivan, feed the sharks. Putting their hands and arms in the shark’s mouth they said that they only felt light pressure from the gnawing teeth. The shark’s razor sharp teeth occasionally caught on their steel mesh covered hands. The shark master pushed up on the nose of the shark to release their hand from the shark’s mouth.
Exiting the cage was the most frightening part of the experience. The sharks had been in a feeding frenzy for more than two hours. Headed upward, we could not see the sharks behind us. We were quickly guided by the shark master back to the dive ladder of the “Bottom Scratcher.”
Sharks had a horrifying reputation. Many anglers have watched a hooked fish eaten after attracting a shark during the fighting frenzy. The tell- tale sight of blood on the ocean surface is the first clue as the fishing line goes lifeless. The fin of the shark slithers like a snake as it cuts through the swells of the ocean.
Scuba diving with sharks is not for everyone. I had more than a hundred dives under my weight belt before I had my first shark sighting. After the first experience, the experienced diver begins looking away from the reef into the deep, blue water. The diver is searching for a glimpse of the “big stuff”, open water pelagics like sharks, whales, and mantas. The shark cage diving with blue and mako sharks was a heart thumping, frigid water, cage sharing memory of anxious moments spent while being consumed by the graceful beauty of the sharks.