Journal lingqi's Journal: August 12th, 2004 4

August 12th, 2004 (6:43pm)

-- continue --

We strapped on all of the necessary gear, and jumped in and in a instant was engulfed in the feeling of weightlessness. While Mack was still getting things ready, I took a peak downward into the dark jade-coloured depth below. The guy lines for the net reaches down into this huge entity which would be the net-cage for our gentle monster within. I tried to make out shapes of anything moving below, but wasn't able to.

Slowly decending along the guy lines, we came to the top of the net in no time. the lines are thick nylon and through years of soaking in water, it acquired a lot of organisms living on it. We had gloves for holding onto the net, as it would be able to effortlessly cut open one's fingers with all the shellfish and whatnot accumulated. Fishes seem to be extremely fond of this area and many sifts in and out of the net, maybe because it's an enjoyable place like an playground, or maybe for the sole purpose to mock the larger one that's stuck ever within.

Actually I am humanizing way too much - the reason so many fishes stick around it because with every dive the dive shop brings krill to feed our friend down there. All the other fishes have gotten quite used to this meal schedule too and is happy to be near such a high concentration of food.

We opened the cage and slipped in headfirst. By open I really don't mean a gate - it was like a flap that was shut by tying another piece of rope to the non-tangled edges. It was not very big and slipping through felt a little strange, like I am entering some lair or labyrinth with dangers looming ahead. To be technical, there was actually danger involved - my certification is _open_ water diver, which doesn't quite cover this diving-in-a-cage-with-a-HUGE-fish scenario, since that one cannot simply perform an emergency ascent if anything goes wrong. But it was more than that, I think it was the distillation of that primal part of human-beings: the fear of unknown.

holding onto the net, I slowly descended away from the exit to make room for Mack. A few meters later, I hear him knocking his tank with a metal stick, usually a "hey pay attention to me" thing - so I turned around to look for him. To my stupefaction, in front of my face not more than an arm length away, was a gaped open mouth a meter wide charging at me at full speed. I think I would have gone "AHHH" if there was such option - one of those things that you never fully appreciate until you lose it. Luckily I were briefed on this, and I caught the bottom lips of the moth, and pushed it upward while turning around. The shark was surprisingly gentle, and swam away in search of the Diver With Food (tm), peeking at me sideways with her tiny eye. I guess she was quite used to this. Anyway - the other fishes were not the only "Pavlov's Fish," the whale shark was also quite aware of this association between divers entering the cage and the onset of shrill - and accordingly charges toward divers as they enter.

Soon after my little incident, the huge bag of feed Mack hauled down with him attracted the attention of half of the ocean, and he became very popular for the time that he held it.

The whale shark is truly a large fish. She swam away and came back, but always with a purpose - that bag of shrill. Unlike other filter feeders, like the basking shark, the whale shark's mouth is actually comparatively normal sized, and it must seek out dense pockets of whatever it is eating. Upon encountering one (like when Mack holds out a handfull of shrill in front of him), she opens her mouth and draws in water with incredible force as the othe small fishes, trying to grab a quick bite, scamble out of the way. After a full draw, the mouth then closes and the water is expelled through the gills. The energy can be felt from a few meter away, and you can visibly see a wave trembling dow the side of her large body with every bite. Swallowing, she then turns and swims away again, readying to make another charge, the small eyes fixed on Mack's bag of shrill.

I exaggerate - I have no idea where the eyes are fixed, for one because I don't think shark rely on their sight all that much, and also becaue they are so damn small that I would have no idea where they are looking anyway. I mean, for such a huge fish, the eyes (two lateral tiny dots near the corners of the mouth) are actually smaller than mine - and I inherit the chinese gene that is notorius for small eyes in our species. At first it feels quite strange looking at the fish with such eyes, because it was completely of a strange proportion.

We were allowed to touch the shark with our gloves off - and I was quite looking forward to confirming my expectation that for something so large, it must be ancient and it's anterior must be the texture of rough asphalt. However, I was quite wrong - the shark was surprsingly soft to the touch, almost spongy, though the surface of its skin feels like fine sandpaper. She feels "new," or at least young, compared to the descriptions I read of whales, that actually show their age of hundreds of years by rough and callous hide.

There are parts of the shark that wasn't spongy and soft, though. The leading edges of the mouth and pectoral fins were full of scars. I suppose I did not expect sharks to scar like humans, but these scars looked very much like foam had erupted from under the skin after a cut and then solifidies into place. They were white and plentiful. I could not help but wonder if they were from the early days of captivity, when the shark gave its share of struggles with the rough and unforgining net.

Eventually, the feed was gone, and she returned to her normal activity of circling the cage deliberately. Her entire body shifting side to side, the large figure would recurringly pass in front of me, and the lines of white / yellow dots flash by, followed by the wake of its tale swooshing, and then she disappears in the darkness again. It is obvious that as the biggest fish in the world, it pays no regard to me - in comparison insignificant, and occasionally the pectoral fins brush past and it is spongy like its body as well. The ridges down its back are highlighted by the little sunlight that reaches down, and somehow reinforce the air of enigma and gravity of its sheer size.

I know I have said tiger shark before but actually what I mean was "torafu-zame," translating to tiger-mark shark. In english it's actually often called the Zebra shark and sometimes the Leopard Shark (Stegostoma Fasciatum), a medium sized carpet shark (a group to which the whale shark also belongs) with an incredibly long caudal fin. Unlike a real tiger-shark, which actually do sometimes eat people, this little guy - actually not so little, maybe 2 meters long - actively avoided confrontation with divers and stayed mostly on the bottom of the net and away from the rest of us. Even though I attempt to chase after it, he was too fast and I did not want to waste air going deeper and get tired out. From the top, he swam swiftly, the long caudal fin trailing behind providing not so much propulsion but waved in sync with his body gracefully.

During this whole time, of course, all of the taiken divers (non licensed divers) pitiably hung outside of the cage's ceiling (they were not allowed to dive deeper than 10 meters, I think), all flat against the barbed net, hoping to be able to see clearer the animal below that is paying no attention to their existance. I kind of felt bad for them, to be honest, because I can imagine how much less memorable if I wasn't being greeted with such a large capacious mouth.

One thing I forget to mention about the mouth. When it sucks, it does it in the most forcable way. One one pass she mistaken me for food (or, for having food) and did the whole sucking thing right in front of me, and I can feel the current literally drawing me in. I almost lost my camera inside. In fact, it is possible to get swallowed by it - Mack relays his personal experience of being sucked down the shark's mouth, and then promptly spitted out. He said (and I'll take his word for it) it was dark and cramped inside, like being stuck in a rubbery meat-tube. I guess as big as she was, she was still no Jonah's whale.

We made it out and hung by one of the guy wires for the decompression. Mack got bored and blew ring-bubbles for entertainment. I don't think we did a full 3 minutes... but I guess I am still alive.

-- to be continued --