destination
THE SHARK KIDS
report
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fiji
ALAN WIGGS © 2013
WHAT KIND OF TEACHER DELIBERATELY TAKES HIS SCHOOL STUDENTS DIVING WITH A BUNCH OF MEAN-LOOKING SHARKS? CRAZY... IRRESPONSIBLE... FOOLHARDY... STUPID... OR JUST PLAIN LUCKY? RIGHT NOW, I FEEL PRETTY LUCKY. I’VE JUST SHARED AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE WITH MY OWN FAMILY, AS WELL AS ‘THE PENINSULA SCHOOL BEQA LAGOON OPEN WATER GRADUATING CLASS’ AND A GORGEOUS FIVE METRE TIGER SHARK CALLED ‘PRINCESS’!
B
eqa Lagoon Resort was the venue for our fifth annual Fijian Scuba expedition, and I was tour leader for a group of 32 staff, students, families and friends from The Peninsula School, Mount Eliza, on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula. Some of the students had completed their Open Water Course prior to leaving Melbourne and had spent the first days of the expedition gaining in-water experience, completing shore dives and boat dives and building up their hours. Another half dozen had been in the pool under the watchful eyes of Delana and Joeli, the resort’s friendly and patient PADI instructors.
For the course candidates the days wore on – gear assembly followed by pool practicals then shore dives and de-briefing sessions. Endless evenings watching PADI course DVDs and poring over text books while we old hands looked on sympathetically, vainly
trying to remember how those damned deco tables actually worked. And then there were questions, lots of them - repetitive groups; surface intervals and ascent rates were discussed as the students nervously prepared for the dreaded theory exam. Kids always hate homework over the school holidays, but this was very different. They all passed the theory and prac. with flying colours and looked very comfortable in the water, so I had a quiet word with Joeli and Delana one balmy evening. “So... are they up to the shark dive?” I asked cautiously. We discussed each kid’s skills and competencies and decided that four would be good to go after another couple of days of successful boat dives, while the others needed a few additional hours under their weight belts. The decision was not made lightly, and I discussed the dive with their parents, phoning them and asking them to consider the issues carefully and
Left to right: The shark kids prop in the gentle current at the safety zone wreck - we had a-one-to-one adult to student ratio and all divers displayed a confident and calm manner. How close is too close? As she wheeled overhead I breathed in deeply, rose off the bottom and managed to catch her toothy smile.
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sportdiving magazine june/july 2013
Olivia Langdon, year 12 Peninsula School student, up close and personal with one of the tawny nurse sharks, closely supervised by Joeli, the fijian shark wrangler.
give an answer the next evening. I was carefully outlined the risks and the opportunities this remarkable dive offered. All agreed, if a little nervously. Taken out of context it must have seemed a strange request! Lachlan Shaw’s mum was fine with it – her older son had done the same dive three years earlier on our first Beqa expedition and returned intact. One evening we showed the earlier shark feed DVD so the group had an idea of what to expect. The drill was to descend fairly quickly, hit the bottom in one group and kneel behind the rope line separating us from the feeding station a few metres away. Their excitement was almost palpable as we headed towards Pacific Harbour to meet with Brendan from Aquatrek who manages the shark feed. Gearing up in a light chop at ‘The Bistro’, Sam joked “Are we on the menu?”. I explained how to recognise each of the eight varieties of shark they were likely to see. The slate-grey bulls would cruise in slowly from the shadows hugging the bottom while the silvertips would nervously flash in from overhead in a smash and grab
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