Sharks.
September 19, 2009
Filed under:Lotso Pics, The Number Nine
I may have mentioned it before, I may have not, but my wife wins. I blew the surprise because I’m an idiot who just randomly shoots his mouth off.
It’d been a birthday surprise she’d been brewing for months, but whilst digging around in my "Stuff From America" box when I wasn’t looking, she wasn’t able to find my dive certification card, which she needed to set up my surprise.
Then, sitting on the couch one Saturday with the toddler on my lap and my pajamas still on at 3 in the afternoon, I was watching some "Travel West Australia" show and saw the host diving in a cage with sharks. Being the jackass that I am and watching the host spack it like a fruitloop, I said loudly (and what I thought was sarcastically) "Geez honey, I’d hate doing THAT!"
She turned slowly in her chair, "Doing… what?"
"Swimming with Sharks! If you’re like, planning a birthday surprise for me that involves swimming with sharks, you can Forget It!"
A slow, stunned look crossed her face before I got the frowning of a lifetime and she said in a low growl, "How did you find out?"
My cheesy and hapless grin faded when I started to cotton on that I’d done something big and wrong. A full minute passed while I sat there thinking I was funny and she sat there trying to figure out how I’d figured it out. Then, when I actually started the dialogue again and the jig was up, I broke out into monumental smiles and hooting.
Toddlecurl got so excited she started whooping too, and it was ON.
I guess I’d known that she’d had something planned as a surprise, but I simply had no idea. None. Not that I couldn’t believe that my wife was that cool, I just couldn’t believe that she’d surprise me with something that cool.
I couldn’t find my dive card, so I instantly went and ordered one off the website and paid the expedite fees even (and I’m a cheapass, so that’s saying something) because the blood thundering in my ears in excitement was driving my actions.
We wrangled sisters-in-law and even popped kids from school and all headed down to AQWA to Dive With The Sharks. I needed to wee about 3 times after we got there and even went again after the nice li’l divemaster got me all suited up.
The family was all ready down in the viewing tube and started watching the divers descend, only to see me plunk down in the water and then pop back up. Then plunk back in and then pop back up onto the ledge. Damon, my oldest, told me later he thought I was scared and didn’t want to go and wife confessed that she’d thought I’d lost a step or two and had forgotten how to sink.
This was actually kind of true, but turns out that I’ve always been a highly bouyant guy (not flambouyant, doofuses) and they kept packing weight into my vest to get me to sink. See, to keep out of the fish’s way (and to not get eaten by the sharks) they need you to be negatively bouyant so that you’re stuck to the bottom of the tank at all times and not floating around like chum. When I unloaded later, I found about 12 kg in one pocket and 2 in the other, making my floundering and flailing on the bottom of the tank make a bit more sense to spectators than wife saying, "Oh, he’s just a bit of a nimrod." (she didn’t really say that (she totally made me say that (no she didn’t but she would have))).
SO… here we go:
Lots of beautiful little fish in the giant aquarium that you forget about. Most of them are snapper and trevally, or as I like to call ‘em "Shark Food", but there are some really cool little ones that will swim up and around your head in curiosity.
Okay, there we go. That’s one big mutha. I was told during prep that there were 4 Grey Nurse Sharks in the tank, 3 females and a male named "Dopey", the largest at 3.8 metres, a female named "Munchkin".
This is probably "Dopey". He doesn’t look dopey, he looks quite killy if you ask me.
HEY! There I am! I was actually watching for the divemaster through the tube thingo and not being surprised and/or angry at my wife for taking my picture. Visibility into that thing was amazingly good, even if I look a bit weird when looking out of it. I s’pose I look a bit weird anyway.
Scuba masks make you ANGRY. And SURPRISED. And smudgy. Is that you wife?
Holy cats, those stingrays like to swoop and cruise things. We were told that their eyes on are top of their head, so they like to cruise over things and sort of… glide. Someone in the group asks, "Are their barbs removed?" and the divemaster gal stifled a laugh and told us that all the things in there are about as nature-tastic as you can get. "Don’t worry, they only barb you if you piss ‘em off or step on ‘em, NEITHER of which you’ll do today."
Yeah, reassured. Sure.
This li’l guy was really curious and cute and I remember thinking, "Aw, he’s just a little guy" and then remembering that he’s 3 times the size of any of the hundreds of fish I’ve got in my house.
Perspective is everything.
Not sure what I’m doing, but apparently I think I’m quite awesome. OR I’m simply a ham. I’ve been called both, though "ham" outnumbers "awesome" by about eleventybillion to one.
Yeah, my eyes are actually legitimately bulging out of my head in this one. You’re not supposed to touch the animals, but it’s so damn tempting when they’re RIGHT THERE.
We had to traverse the tube a few times, putting us up close and personal with the folks underneath, and if I’d known that my crotch was going to be smeared across the viewing area so many times, I would’ve done a dance or given it a wiggle or something.
The turtles don’t see so well, we were told, and this one kept swimming right at me, causing me to have to move out of his way. He was HUGE at approximately 200 kg, and there’s more about turtles later…
Cute li’l guy who’s a teenager in turtle years at 35.
THIRTY FIVE?!?!!? I’M THIRTY FIVE!!!!
I knew I felt like a teenager for a good and proper reason.
The divemasters were fairly strict on moving quickly across the tubes so that you stay out of the fish’s way, but I figured I had enough time to fart around a bit. There’s always time for that.
"Sharks? What sharks? I’ll moider ‘em! I’ll pulverize ‘em!!"
I think I’m actually threatening sis-in-law Nicole and telling her that she’s lucky I’m in there and she’s not a shark.
"holyshittheresreallysharksinhere!"
For reals you guys, there’s some really big and mean and bitey and swimming-at-me sharks in this tank with me.
Waitaminnit, I PAID for this?!?
Heh. I remember thinking, "Geez that’s a big fish… that could eat me…"
Seconds before this, I was tooling along the bottom happily and felt something nudging my leg. Thinking that I was just a bit too slow for the diver behind me, I went to kick a bit and then felt something nudging and rubbing along the insides of my thighs. To be honest, I got a bit arced up thinking that the other diver was being quite inappropriate with my personal and private areas, ’til I looked down.
This blind li’l sucker came from right out between my legs, paused to stare me right in the eyes and then kicked away.
If turtles could look embarrassed, I reckon that’s the expression he had, and I giggled my ass off into my regulator.
After I checked my nuts were alright.
They’re so streamlined and… deadly looking. They are just awesome to watch swim.
Okay, here’s where I admit that I wasn’t actually watching him the entire time simply because they are so captivating to witness.
I wasn’t turning my back on those rows and rows of teeth.
‘Course, there’s 4 Nurse Sharks and 3 somethingsomething sharks whose name I can’t remember… wife has handed me a book… why can’t I remember such a simple name? Sandbar! SANDBAR shark. Who can’t remember that?
At several points during the dive, I remember looking in and seeing my neice Imogen and wife pointing frantically with both hands somewhere behind me. Given that the visibility in a dive mask is poo, I frequently had something large and predatory swim by me while I was looking elsewhere.
Meh, at least I found two of their teeth in the sand on the floor of the tank. The divemaster said we could keep whatever we found, and Jo said there was some no-it-all grandpa in there answering his grandkid’s questions of what we were doing in there with "See! They’re cleaning." To which, my spitfire sis-in-law Nicole said loudly, "I THINK THEY’RE DIVING." Bless ‘er.
Sometimes, I just can’t resist it.
The weird ghosting effect of Jo’s camera inside of the viewing tunnel actually detracts from a few things. One of which is that the glass distorts for distance, meaning the closer you are to it, the larger you look… and the farther away the smaller you look. This means that I look sort of normal Judd-sized, and the shark looks like it’s about the size of a big dog and is about 12 feet away.
Whereas it was actually about 6 feet away and was roughly the size of a garbage truck.
Worst part was that I couldn’t see that he had a clear path ahead of him, and I thought he was up against the rock wall. He’d swam in above us in curiosity and then slowed right down, turning several times to look at me. Right. At. ME.
Wife commented later that while it didn’t seem as if I was shrinking back into the sand and weeing in my wetsuit, I did appear to be wishing very much that he would just move along.
She’s right. No weeing, but lots of wishing.
The Smooth Stingrays were amazing in that they’re so… well… smooth. They just glide cleanly over everything and occasionally come right over your head where you can watch the bubbles from your reg get caught under their belly as they cruise above you, blocking out the light.
Of course, in the water, no one can hear you, especially through your regulator. But, if you could, you’d hear me singing, "Ohhhhhhh, let’s name the zones, the zones, the zones, let’s name the zones of the deep blue seeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaa!!!" When I realised that not only could anyone hear me, and therefore my singing was wasting air, but that it’s slightly silly to be in a huge and wonderful sea adventure and singing songs from "Finding Nemo."
Of course, reminding myself to actually act like a grown up never seems to work, as I watched him swim away I could hear myself singing, "There’s mesopolagic, bathyal, abyssalpelagic…"
I’ll never grow up.
But with a family like mine, I don’t ever have to.
Thanks Wife, you WIN. Happy Birthday to me indeed.
EDIT: Wife reminded me to put some pics of the shark teeth.
That’s the bigger one, that even has a chip on the end. Wife was all "pity it’s chipped" and my response was, "But the chip happened IN THE SHARK’S MOUTH."
That is awesome.
This one’s litter, but very pointy and sharp. I’ll make a necklace out of it when I want to puncture holes in my neck.
Here’s me drinking Toohey’s Extra Dry watching Collingwood lose badly in the AFL semifinals. Dickheads.
I’m still in my PJs and it’s… 8:34 in the PM. This is why weekends without kids freakin’ RULE.
I’m going to eat croissants and an old waffle for dinner, with another beer.
Did I mention this weekend rules? Wife wins too.
September 19th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Sounds like the best present ever (I excel at understatements).
September 19th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
So, it turns out that that looks awesome…
But there is no way in HELL you would get me in that tank. You are braver than I.
And yes, your Missus is teh awesome, but you know that already :)
I must say that being molested by a turtle is certainly a once in a lifetime opportunity, up there with being kissed by an elephant or going to a disco with a giraffe… (yes I opened the wine….)
September 19th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Waaaaayyyy coooool!!! Probly beat jumping out of an airplane all to hell. Rock on, Jo.
Glad your 35th was awesome. I remember Sept. 7th, 1974 like it was yesterday…..
September 21st, 2009 at 6:48 am
Dude, that is the awesomest of awesome birfdays. Can’t wait to see what you swim with when you turn 40. For some reason the thought of you eating croissants and an old waffle with beer made me laugh out loud. Happy Birthday.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:32 am
It was awesome to watch!!!!!!!!!!
But you forgot to mention you flipping me off in the tank and then I loudly yell….”OH MY F*CKING GOD THAT F*CKER FLIPPED ME OFF” then some parents look at me like I shot a rabbit or something in front of their kids…….It was an amazing funtime day/night