from: Elisabeth Eaves, Beware, Shark
June 3, 2008
Slate

Not so much swimming as hovering, I slipped into the school of sharks. There were 18 of them, some as long as 8 feet. "These are big girls," the dive master had warned us; many were pregnant and thicker than usual. They swam above, below, and around me, so close I could have reached out and touched them. The dive master had advised us not to, a warning that had struck me as bizarre. I mean, really. What idiot would do such a thing?

But now I saw the problem. These Caribbean reef sharks had skin like velvet, dark and rich in the shadows, shiny and pale when it caught the light. They shimmered hypnotically as they moved. I noticed scars, dark healed gashes on their sides and around their jaws, telling stories I couldn't read—of feeding frenzies, mating rituals, and fishermen. I wanted to touch. The sharks, meanwhile, seemed to register me as an uninteresting object. They came disquietingly close but always turned away from me at the last second. As they swerved, I found myself wishing one would shimmy along my body as she did, gliding in tandem with me for a few moments.

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