Dance with the Sharks

By Gyula Plaganyi

A six week trip cheating death and tempting fate in what must surely rate as one of the most adventurous jobs in the world:
An underwater Shark Wrangler!
With 34 color pictures of the dives and the tuna.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gyula Plaganyi
• Release date: Jun 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476405049

Book preview

DANCING WITH THE SHARKS

by

Gyula Plaganyi

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PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS

This book available in print from

www.chargan.com

Dancing with the Sharks

Copyright © 2012 Gyula Plaganyi

ISBN: 978-1-476-40504-9

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Gyula Plaganyi asserted his right under the Copyright Act 1976 to be identified as the author of this work.

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Contents

The Courage To Continue

So You Wanna Be A Cowboy?

The Sashimi Warrior

Midnight Watch

The Gentle Giant

The Great Shark Experiment

Found Some Fish

Split Second Timing

A Swarm Of Bronze Whalers

The Blue Shark

The Tuna Gate

Seal Interaction

Rough Weather

Mako

White Pointer Down South

Feeding Time

The Safety Of Our Lives

Beyond Boredom

Why Competition?

Land Ahoy!

Salt Water Crocodile

Search And Rescue

Photographs

Acknowledgements

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THE COURAGE TO CONTINUE

Life is not measured by the number of breaths that you take; but by the moments that take your breath away.

It ain’t what you say, but the way that you say it that matters …

When I first met my wife Stephanie she took my breath away. It was more than ten years ago and I remember her words clearly. Her only regret was that there were too few days left in our lives for her to truly get to know me. I feel the same way about the ocean. At least I thought I did. That was until I did that dive off Rottnest Island.

I’d like to share that dive with you. Looking back it seemed like a bad moment from the movie Final Destination except that this was no movie. It was Deja Vue with the shark all over again. In my past life I must have been a bullfighter. In this life I seem to have danced with the sharks.

How do you come to terms with the fact that you should be dead? - That you were extremely lucky to survive, not one, but numerous attempts to extinguish you. I have that feeling; that feeling of ‘I don’t deserve to be here.’ Maybe that’s why I sometimes appear to be brave. I’m not really brave, but rather consumed with curiosity. Hopefully this trait will act as my guardian angel. My guess is that there wasn’t a rush of applicants for this ‘angel’ job when I was born. There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. I prefer to call it a sense of adventure.

Nowadays I spend a great deal of time on surface supply doing underwater commercial work. Previously I pursued my obsession with free diving, diving repeatedly to depths of 20 to 30 metres on a single breath, often staying down close on two minutes per dive. Sometimes I felt that the exertion of a dive left me with only a handful of seconds before I took that first breath again. Why would I tempt fate like this? Surely the numbers would play against me one day? Yes, maybe, but I was not afraid. I am not afraid. I am in control. I know the risk and I can calculate it down to the last few seconds. You needed to be confident but not over confident. You needed to be in touch with your inner self, your biorhythmic clock and your sense of survival.

All very well to be in control - to be in self-control, but what about creatures beyond your control? Actually, what about circumstances beyond your control? What about when the hunter becomes the hunted? When you come up against a predator that is superior? A predator that is in its own element, how do you survive that? Simple: with your mind. That is all that you have in a crisis. The rest of what you do is automatic.

Fight or flight? If you don’t fight, you are dead. I have a will to survive, but true living is not living without constant reminder of how it could not be. Coming close to the edge makes you appreciate life much more than simply living out a mundane existence. I don’t want to die of boredom. I can think of better ways to go. Yes, I’ve had a shark crunch a fish off my spear right in front of me whilst I’m 27 metres under water. The sound of teeth cutting bone in the water is a frightening experience. Watching a Tiger Shark bite clean through the shell of a 100 kilogram turtle makes you realise how little protection your wet suit actually has. I’ve had a Silver Tip lead the pack and decimate a fish that I have speared; with only a handful of scales left as evidence; but nothing comes close to the interaction with a Great White.

As a child my father once took me on his boat to go and see some Orca Killer Whales. We went up to a pack and he asked me if I wanted to climb into the water and swim with them. I asked him how he knew that they wouldn’t eat me. My son, sometimes there’s nothing you can do. You just have to trust your gut instinct. When it’s your time, it’s your time. I replied that I wasn’t ready yet for my time.

Now, many years later I emigrated to Australia to get a better life for my kids; to give them opportunities that they wouldn’t be privy to in Africa. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine them growing up in Australia without their father. You see, for all my careful calculation and planning, I made a mistake. I underestimated the risk - the risk that for me the likelihood of another encounter with a Great White Shark was on the table.

The encounter off Rottnest in August last year was my fourth encounter with this apex predator.

The day began with a smile. My dive buddy, Simon Embleton, has a smile that can make the greyest of grey days seem so optimistic. Often his smile would be his only companion as he explored the waters around Perth. He is a loner, an ace out. I used to be like that but as I grew older I realized that it is more sensible to dive as a pair and the buddy, buddy talk got me a spot on his boat.

On this day we left Fremantle Harbour and headed out towards Rottnest Island, about 20 kilometres off shore. The water was an icy, black colour and I wasn’t sure if there would be any visibility underneath. I wasn’t worried about the black water since Simon, in all his years of diving, had never seen a shark off Rottnest before - any shark, not even a small shark. Simon took us to a reef about two kilometres north of Rottnest and he then anchored the boat. He was very quick to enter the water but I wasn’t convinced that this spot looked very promising. I took my time to put on my wetsuit and looked around for a speargun to use. I chose the little gun, a one meter gun from the Rob Allen Dive Factory in South Africa. My choice of spear gun reflected my faith, or should I say lack of faith in this spot. When in an optimistic mood I usually chose the larger 1.3 meter speargun.

I sat on the stern of the boat for a few minutes and allowed my heartbeat to tune into the rhythm of the swells. I closed my eyes and had my feet in the water. The swirling water between my toes was quite comforting. When my heartbeat pumped in unison with the swells I opened my eyes. I was ready for the dive. I gently slipped into the water. The surface was very dark from the recent rains and the effluent from the Swan River. Underneath there was some eerie visibility and all I saw on my couple of bounce dives were a few small Pink Snapper. Simon had shot something and had strung it onto his gun. A short while later he screamed as a small bronze whaler had sneaked up behind him and neatly bit his fish off from behind the head. Simon was a little stressed as this was a rare occurrence for him, especially in this location. Nevertheless, we decided to move further out to sea in an effort to get away from the black water.

Our hopes were realized when about three kilometres further offshore we entered cleaner water. We were in about 12 metres of water and you could make out light from dark from the boat - the light sand patches and the dark areas of reef. The current was running onshore, so we went a little bit upstream of the reef and I threw the anchor onto a big sand patch. The boat would drift backwards and the anchor would grab onto the lip of the reef. Simon entered the water and swam behind the boat. I entered the water on the lee side of the boat. I had my face in the water and I could see a few tufts of kelp swaying gently on the rocky bottom. I was interested in swimming up-current and diving onto the sand patch. Call it habit or whatever, but