In August of 1973, I sailed a Morgan 22 foot sloop from Ft Lauderdale over to the Bahamas. We spent about a month diving and spearfishing in some of the most remote areas of the Bahamas Bank, and when you are spearing fish and dragging a bloody fish bag around with you in the water, you see sharks. I saw two very large sharks, in excess of 10 feet, while skin diving off of Mangrove Key, which is on the edge of the Bank and the smaller fish that collect around these mangrove islands draw in the deep water sharks. One, which I saw directly beneath me about 12-14 ft below me, seemed to only be traversing the channel and had no interest in us. Another I had the great fortune to see moving out of the blue haze of deep water and into the shallows, where he spread his pectoral fins like ailerons to put on the breaks as he glimpsed us. He looked like a bus making a stop. Again, no real interest, and he moved on.

It is difficult to convey the awe inspired by a creature larger than yourself who is in the same body of water and in close proximity to you. It is a humbling experience. I do not believe that these large fish ever perceived us as possible prey, and perhaps because we were in their environment and aware of them. The speare fishing thing changes everything, though. And if we saw large sharks nearby, we would stop spearing and head for the boat. There were several times when smaller animals of 4 feet and less, which we tended to not be as concerned about, would suddenly veer toward you, especially when a freshly skewered fish was twitching on the spear.

One of my friends was head down on a reef, pulling a snapper off of his spear when an aggressive three-footer came at his back. He heard our shouts in time to straighten up and kick his flippers in its face. In retrospect, we talked about what the bite of a small shark could do when you are radio-less and thirty miles from the nearest civilization.

Back to Jaws, the movie came out about three years after our trip, and we tended to scoff at the terror the very idea of a shark has on the mind of those who have no experience with them. But I have to admit that, in the times when I have swam in the deep ocean since, that first plunge, when you transition from our world to theirs, is always taken with some trepidation. The impact of the movie on my daughter when she was about 6 yrs old was to make her use of the toilet and the shower very hurried, since Jaws could could come through the pipes and attack in the worst sort of way.