One of the things they teach you during night scuba-diving training is to direct your flashlight down, not directly in front of you. The aim is to avoid accidentally shining a spotlight on a prey animal, making it suddenly visible to any predators nearby.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a nerdy 15-year-old completing my NAUI Master Diver course at Seacamp marine biology summer camp in the Florida Keys, I conscientiously logged this information along with all the other advice and tips I was being given. Even so, when I set off for my first ever night dive with my fellow marine biology nerds, I was nervous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had completed a few dozen dives by that point, but this felt different. Scuba diving is fundamentally about entering an alien world that humans aren\u2019t built for. If the technology fails \u2013 or if you use it incorrectly \u2013\u00a0a lot of things can go very wrong, very fast. And all these risks are amplified when you can\u2019t see, and other people can\u2019t see you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We left the dock around sunset and headed for a nearby coral reef. Despite my nerves, the start of the dive went incredibly well \u2013 I relished using my flashlight to illuminate the world around me just a little bit at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, about halfway through, I made a mistake. Just for a moment, I messed up and shined my flashlight ahead of me, where it illuminated a large fish. I think it was a snapper or hogfish, but I didn\u2019t get a good look at it before the bull shark<\/a> that was apparently directly behind and above me accelerated and took it out. It passed close enough that I felt the whoosh of the current \u2013 then it was gone, leaving only a cloud of scales and blood swirling in my flashlight beam. \u00a0<\/p>\n Though I know (and use) all the statistics about how sharks aren\u2019t a major threat to human safety, in that moment \u2013 before I had a chance to feel awed by the experience \u2013 I was simply terrified. Wonder at what I\u2019d been fortunate enough to witness came a little later.\u00a0<\/p>\n The shark wasn\u2019t interested in me at all, of course, just the prey animal I unwittingly lit up for it. Sharks are amazing, powerful, ecologically important, threatened and misunderstood animals \u2013 and they need our respect as well as our help.<\/p>\n