Archive for the ‘Totally Unrelated’ Category
What do I do now?
Sunday, August 24th, 2008I’m just back from a brief stay in Cairns (FNQ). This included the obligatory trip out to the Great Barrier Reef and a quick stop on Green Island for the morning to go snorkelling. Now I’ve been snorkelling before in Fiji and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was with a some-what “been there, done that” attitude that I adjusted the mask and swam out from the tropical beach.
Very quickly I found myself in the presence of a wide variety of fish, initially all very small and colourful as if I’d jumped into some-ones aqaurium.
As I got out a bit further over the reef sections, I could see even more pinks, blues, greens and reds darting between the coral and the plant life all relatively unconcerned about my presence. Now these were larger fish and not just the one or two but small schools of 8-12 at a time.
Snorkelling is a very deceptive pastime. After about 30 minutes I stuck my head up to look around and found myself about 75 metres from the beach, just on the outer perimeter as designated by the safety buoy. No problems, I’ll just swim back in and have another look around as I go.
Once again I passed the coral and it’s colourful inhabitants and just as I was about to rejoin the sandy beach, I spied something much larger than I had previously encountered swimming in the same direction less than a couple of metres below me.
Instantly I held my breath as I recognised the familiar dorsal fin and gills of the shark family. Uh-Oh! Now this wasn’t the huge Hollywood relative but at around 1.5-2m in length, it was enough for me to stop in my tracks. I watched as it thankfully took no interest in me and swam off along the shore in relatively shallow water. I then swam the remaining few metres to the beach.
I sat and thought about the preceeding few moments and came to the conclusion that after the initial shock realisation of what I was witnessing, I wasn’t terrified. This was mainly because of it’s size and the fact that it behaved exactly the same as all the other fish I had witnessed; merely going about’s it’s business unperturbed by the boat full of curious visitors swimming about. I may have had a different view had it been larger.
As it turns out, it appears to have been a black tip reef shark which are fairly common and relatively harmless. Just goes to show you what a bad-reputation can do for you.
My mate