I say goodbye to my husband of 25 years as he dons his
wetsuit and prepares to dive into the ocean to feed sharks. He applies a dab of
sun cream to his nose “Mayonnaise for
sharks,” I think.
The setting for the experience is Stuart Cove’s in Nassau,
the Bahamian capital. Just down the
coast is the worryingly named Jaws Beach.
Stuart Cove, it turns
out, is a person, not a place, and his
claim to fame (apart from sending humans to the sharks on a daily basis) is
that he taught Sean Connery to dive. Ladies’ pulses went racing during the opening sequence of Goldfinger where 007 appears
wearing a fake duck on his
head and unzips his wet suit to reveal
perfectly styled hair and a white tuxedo, but I find myself dwelling on Sir Sean’s heart-stopping confrontation with Larco’s
killer sharks in Thunderball
The sharks waiting
for lunch at Stuart Cove today are not the killer variety but Caribbean Reef Sharks
(although Bahamian waters lie in The Atlantic Ocean) Kate, the jolly guide, gives
a short talk to the divers, describing the display sharks make in anticipation
of their meal. “Sharks are excited by the sight of blood,” she tells us, and
demonstrates how she will be waving some bloody fish around to get them to
perform For her meeting with these Draculas of the deep she is wearing a
strange outfit of chain mail over her wetsuit to protect herself. Looking like some underwater Sir Lancelot she
instructs the divers that they must group in a circle on the ocean floor with
their heads bowed, as if taking part in some pagan ritual. They must keep their
arms by the side all the time and, she stresses (unnecessarily, I feel) “Don’t
chase the sharks”
The female sharks are strapping girls, weighing in at
400-500 pounds and 8 to 10 feet long.
The males, she adds, are about 6 foot and have two penises
Husband surfaces some time later in one piece, but looking
slightly inadequate after an afternoon spent with the well-endowed boy sharks.
He describes some 40 or so sharks swooping around him, brushing
against his arm and leering at him with their macabre bared-teeth grin. At the
bottom of the sea was a rusting abandoned cage, the owner of which one hopes
has lived to dive another day
We hail a taxi to drive us back to downtown Nassau. The
driver enquiries how we have spent our afternoon and the steering wheel shudders
when we tell him. “Shark and DIVE” he enunciates slowly. “Thems two words I
don’t care to hear in the same sentence”
I originally wrote this piece for REAL TRAVEL magazine
