Recently I faced one of my fears and deliberately swam with sharks. I say deliberately as seeing as though I’m in the water a bit and it is their home, there’s a chance I’ve been in the vicinity of a shark or two previously. I’m not afraid of them. I’ve never panicked jumping in the ocean, wondering if I was going to be nibbled on. I’m afraid of not being able to touch the ground. And of the unexpected. I mean, how would it even feel to be so close to such powerful and often feared creatures?
Grey Nurse Sharks are big sharks, reaching up to around 3.6 metres as adults. Just born, they are already at a healthy 1m in length and I’m only 1.5m tall, for a little bit of perspective. They’re slow-moving with rows of protruding, jagged teeth and small, almost beady eyes. They’re often referred to as the labradors of the sea in an effort to de-stigmatise the species but if you’ve ever owned a lab, you’ll know they jump all over you and gobble up everything in sight, so perhaps not the most helpful analogy!
But GNS are non aggressive, preferring to move along the bottom of rocky outcrops and sand and gravel-filled gutters eating various fish and crustaceans. Like anything with a mouth, they can bite especially if cornered. But people regularly dive with these sharks, which are known for their quiet nature, and I wanted to experience them for myself.
There’s several sites throughout the state where these sharks congregate in pretty big numbers (called ‘aggregation sites’), including one at Bass Point in the Illawarra that is also a fabulous snorkelling spot. And that’s where I headed.
It took some gentle coaxing (over weeks, I should point out) before I finally put my head down and moved from the rocky edges of the bay and out until the ocean floor dropped out beneath me, the bottom carpeted with green and brown seaweed and boulders of various sizes.
My eyes seemed to take ages to adjust to the dim expanse but finally, from out of the darkness a shape emerged. My very first Grey Nurse Shark! And then another and another until at any time there were about eight sharks circling beneath me, their tails swaying languidly behind them.
I could see the scratches on their steel-blue/grey bodies, the mottled spots on the sides of others and the occasional sucker fish along for the ride. It was exhilarating and mesmerising and absolutely awe-inspiring and definitely very special considering their conservation status.
GNS are listed as being critically endangered in New South Wales. They were hunted to near extinction in the 50s, 60s and 70s. At the time it was estimated that there were only about 500 individuals along the east coast of Australia. They became a protected species in 1984 but even so some estimate the current east coast population to be about 2000 sharks. They are still very much a species at risk.
This morning I picked up an ice-cream container load – yes, including the actual container – of plastic rubbish on the beach. A few weeks ago I found a discarded net washed ashore from a commercial fishing rig. There's so much to fear about the ocean but it's not these animals.
If you'd like to swim with the sharks but don't want to get wet, you watch part of my encounter here.
Read more: Learn about local researchers' findings in If ocean users don't fear shark bites, should funding go to drowning prevention? by Teaniel Mifsud, whose whose PhD research at the University of Wollongong centres on human-shark encounters.
