Credit:- Jeff Kubina - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/

Seeing a 3 metre shark heading straight for me with it’s mouth open, I heeded the divemaster’s advice from the briefing session and ducked down behind the reef.  The experience of that shark passing less than half a metre over the top of me is one I won’t forget. I was close enough to have plucked out one of the teeth it was about to shed from the front of its jaw – but remembering just how sharp one tooth felt when we handled it in the briefing session, I kept my hands well away.

Sounds dramatic? The stuff of dreams or nightmares? OK – let me come clean… Yes I was in the water with the shark and yes it came that close to me with it’s mouth open.   However, I was diving at the Aquarium of Western Australia (AQWA) and not the open sea on this occasion and an encounter like that was almost guaranteed when you’re in a tank full of large nurse sharks and smaller whaler sharks.

Despite their size and scary ‘open mouthed’ appearance, nurse sharks are relatively placid, particularly if they’ve spent a fair chunk of their lives being waited on hand and foot in a big bath.  However, if you were to pop up right in front of them when they’re not expecting it then they have been known to bite, so the emphasis of the briefing before entering the water is to make sure you have excellent buoyancy control and stay close to the bottom of the aquarium at all times.

Having not been under the water for a couple of years, I was grateful for the open water refresher I’d done on a wreck trail dive the week before – at least I knew if I my mask was flicked off by another diver’s fin or I had problems with buoyancy I would deal with it calmly and not inadvertently head into the path of an oncoming shark or stingray.

I must admit feeling a twinge of apprehension as I was about to enter the water and looked down to see a large grey outline with a fin breaking the surface. If you’re watching these creatures through the glass tunnels and windows below, firstly you won’t see this classic view of the shark’s fin and secondly, the effect of the glass reduces the apparent size of the object being viewed by 30%.

This size reduction caused much hilarity amongst the audience gathered in the observation tunnel below as, according to my wife and daughters later, we looked ‘like hobbits’ when we entered the water. Diving with an audience was certainly a new experience and quite disconcerting when you see them pointing at things around you that you can’t see as quickly – The narrow field of view from the mask, restriction of the regulator feed,  position of the air tank and resistance of the water makes rapid head and body turning harder. It was only on playing back some of the video my daughter was taking of me from the observation tunnel that I appreciated how close I was to some of the tank’s inhabitants, particularly the stingray who seems to have developed a bit of a game of darting underneath the divers at unexpected moments.

click for larger view

For any divers heading out to Western Australia for the first time then I recommend Bell Scuba for their excellent range of gear for hire. These guys also take some responsibility for looking after the Bell Park Wreck Trail dive site which is literally off the shore opposite their beach front premises.

It’s in a tank, only 5 metres down and the inhabitants are more like pets than wild creatures – but, it’s an amazing experience and well worth doing if you can.  Find the Shark Dive Experience details here and a Virtual Tour that gives a better idea than my fuzzy pics.