White
Shark encounter in a Mediterranean Dive
In
the Mediterranean Sea we’re not used to shark encounters. Fish are
scarce and believed not enough to fed big predators like sharks.
Last
year a photographer spent 4 months on a boat, pouring overboard hundreds
of liters of blood and chopped fish trying to take a picture of sharks,
but failed. He spotted only few, little, gray sharks, but unfortunately
dead ones and on the deck of a professional fisherman in Lampedusa, the
southmost island of Italy.
However,
in the Med sharks do exist. Recent studies have shown that there are
mating grounds for the White Shark and a BIG one (a female of over 7 m)
was taken in Malta (south east of Sicily).
Great
White have been caught in the “tonnara”, a huge net system,
spanning kilometers in the sea, for catching school of tunas during their
migration routes. One of the most known professional divers working there,
Nitto Minneo, one day told me that one of them, and some days later
another one, was caught in the nets. And it was his task to dive and free
them so the tuna could enter again in the tonnara and not swim away,
spooked by the predator. The second one, a huge female, was not really
dead but JUMPED on him with her mouth wide open only few inches from his
face. He was able to see the blue of the water THROUGH the monster’s
gills…
So
it should not be a real surprise to meet one of them if you dive on
a bank very far from the coast, along a deep drop-off in deep waters…
That
bank is over 40 nm from the coast and, even with a fast boat (mine is a
semirigid pneumatic boat 6 m long with 2 engines of 50 hp) it takes a
little bit to get there. Few question always cross our mind during the
trip: there’ll be that damned frozen current? The viso will be good? And
last, would be possible to find some beautiful fish?
I’m
diving on the edge of the drop-off, where tunas and big amberjacks should
be met. I’ve caught a little amberjack of about 6-7 kilos but I’ve
seen several of bigger size on the underwater horizon. As usual the blue
green of the drop-off, falling from 20-22 m to over 40 is impressing in
the water never clean. I’m on the bottom in an “aspetto” (waiting)
when I hear the dive buddy starting the engines and coming over my head at
full speed. What is he doing? And he’s not even shutting off the engines!
In the meantime there’s nothing here (off course) so I dive up, half
curious and half… well, what was he doing there while I was fishing? He
is very excited and quickly he is telling me about a big fin on the
surface three hundred meters from the boat. OK, OK, let’s go see what it
is.
At
that bank you can really expect, even for the Med, any thing: once we saw
a massive swordfish jumping completely out of the water and coming down in
a huge butterfly splash. Anyway. The fin is really there. What can it be?
Not a dolphin (I know, it’s a shark – tell me the merry part of my
mind), he’s not coming out to breathe. Not a sunfish (I told you, it’s
a shark) there’s water churning well after the fin that’s the tail for
the sunfish, and look how much water is stirring that one! What’s
remaining? (Look, I’m sure) A swordfish? The fin is different (any other
doubts? I told you from the beginning).
No.
It’s a shark. In the meantime we’re nearing it, the engines at the
minimum. We arrive against the light, it’s not clear under the water:
It’s an incredibly flat day (it must be over ten years since the last
time over here) and the sun is mirroring over the smooth surface. We’re
very near now; almost sideways to the fish… it’s diving!
Disappointment. We go a little faster, we’re now on the vertical and,
standing on the prow planks I’m able to glimpse a big gray-green shape
sinking in the deep water almost without moving. I tell in a singsong (don’t
ask me why) to the buddy at the controls: it’s a shark, it’s a shark,
it’s…
Stop
to the engines.
Around
us only flat water. Even the wavelets produced by the monster’s motion
are disappeared.
Silence.
Around nothing.
We
wait.
Nothing.
-
Who knows where’ll be by now?
Silence
again.
-
It was beautiful, isn’t it? So great!
We
search the still slab of the sea. Nothing. Not even the whirls of the
current.
Let’s
go away. Unwillingly we start up the engines, slowly we turn the prow
again toward the bank edge; we go back…
In
the wake (who’ll ever know what’s in these animals’ head), here
again the fin.
It’s
following us. It’s there again!
With
the camera in hand I dart on the prow planks so to be high on the water
and start taking pictures. The very first one is a bad one, overexposed,
but there’s the fin (like in the jokes) out of the water with the little
ripples of the beast’s movement all around it.
But
I’m not satisfied. I want more. I’ve the mouth parched dry, and I’m
savoring this excitation, embracing it, so to re-live it again and again
later. I want it underwater.
My
buddy wouldn’t let me in the water. He threatens to open the throttles
and to leave me there, but I can’t resist. He’s here, it’s so near,
it’s big. I dip the underwater camera, head and arms together trying to
take a full picture of him. I resurface for taking a gulp of air; I’m
all crooked and contorted on the side of the boat, hot in the sun. I
return again with the head underwater, the heart rate maddened, the camera
clenched hard in the hands (to lose it now!), and I take pictures at rapid
fire. I resurface only to breathe, quickly, quickly.
We’ve
overtaken him. He’s behind us now. We stop the engines and the boat
slackens its motion and stops sideways in front of him. He turns almost 90
degrees and swims along the boat’s side. It’s two meters from me!
Again I plunge head and camera, trying to go underwater the most I can,
for seeing him, for remembering him, for watching him. The picture will be
from the pectoral fin to the mouth.
And
then, almost to the surface, it parades the huge tail. The upper and lower
lobes are of the same length! (It’s a White Shark, tells me now that
merry part of my mind).
-
It’s a White Shark – tells my buddy – it’s too big. Look, it’s
just a bit smaller than the boat. If he’s not five meters long he’s
four meters and ninety – keeps telling my dive buddy.
I
hesitate, then I give up.
-
As a diver, it’s over ninety percent that it’s a White Shark. As a
biologist, I need to look to the pictures, but there’re high
probabilities that it’s really a GW.
From
that moment on this is a close encounter with the White Shark. One of the
rarest sharks here, never photographed freely swimming in the Med, for
what I know, and the pictures are really close!
And
the Shark is what I’ve always dreamed of a Shark. To see it moving gives
a sensation of boundless power, a slight movement of that great tail and
he progresses almost without seeming (with the engines at the minimum we
travel at the same velocity). Smaller sharks do move somewhat sinuously
but not this one. He moves like only a compact mass of dreadfully powerful
muscles can. I could venture something like squat, but it’s a definition
I reject immediately. “Squat” has nothing to do with the movement who
exhibits this immense ivory/gray torpedo that slips silently through the
water with half-open teeth.
It’s
perhaps the massive elegance of the male lion, with all his paunch, the
mane all uncombed and the head that seems too big even for that powerful
body.
But
here there’s not paunch and there’s nothing uncombed. It’s a sleek
patinated image, with the most pure lines, retouched by airbrush in the
passage from the back to the belly. What are out of tune are the teeth.
It’s the mouth, always half-open, engraved by lines (scars?) that’s an
abrupt recall of the purpose of the beast all: to eat.
And
he’s there, swimming indifferently on the surface, while we divers,
baked by the sun and dazed by the wonder, watch him while he’s hardly
etching the skin of the Sea, gliding immense and slow in his reign.
His.
Till some moments ago I was proud of what more than twenty years of diving
had done to me: a diver, sharing, even intermittently, something of the
big Sea. Now, abruptly, it’s all a hoax. As a sea animal I’m a farce,
a fraud. Suddenly I’m being taken back to what really I am, a clumsy
loan from the outside world, wallowing and fluttering up there, near the
light. Ready to the easy escape and to the “I’m not playing anymore”.
Thus
we go, Him in the sea, us in the boat. Slowly. He leads, we follow.
But,
again, I want more. I want to be nearer, much nearer than now. To be,
perhaps, part of the immense mystery that’s this big, old shark moving
in the Sea. Perhaps, I don’t know, something of that primate reflex that
wants to touch something, just to be sure that’s really there, that’s
really existing. Who knows?
The
dive buddy, just so slightly, cautiously, move up a notch the engines, and
so slowly we approach the big tail churning the water. I’m completely
flat on the prow of my boat, camera almost forgotten but a hand nearly
touching the water. The Sea is so flat, now.
He’s
leaving, he’s going down. It’s not so clear like for dolphins that
arch all the body, lift the tail and sink, but he’s bending a little,
the big tail rises, the back (Jesus, it’s SO wide), marbled from the
small ripples of the surface, is less and less clear. The tail moves for a
moment a stream of water toward the surface, flattening it, making it
transparent like a glass pane. I can, for a split second, watch him
completely (it’ll be the last image) then the prow enters in the
flattened zone and ripples it. He vanishes. Gone.
Faraway
dolphins are jumping. We remain alone with our questions.
We
have, in the long run, scared–annoyed it? It was instead supremely
indifferent to our presence, so he’s gone away we being there or not?
Was he chasing the dolphins? Was he scared of the dolphins? They were big
Tursiops, a full school of them…
Was
he hunting, was he hot, was he following some trace we had not the
slightest idea about, there was too much light, the water near the engines
was stinking?…
Waste
of energies. Uselessness. It remains only this.
He’s
gone.
Riccardo A. Andreoli
