It’s Friday the 13th today which means that there are a lot of superstitious people holding their breath around the world!
I love free diving. The peace I feel underwater is comparable to no other place. The feeling of weightlessness, of floating and drifting, of gliding with a flick of the fins. I don’t dive for depth. I dive for the challenge of breath hold. An underwater tourist dolphin style.
Cape Town is famous (notorious?) for her great white sharks. We dive in false bay, home of the ‘submarine’, and yes, I do think about them and hope that they’re somewhere else chasing seals.
To overcome my fear of them I went shark cage diving in Gans Baai. Controversy about shark cage diving and sea sickness aside (10 foot swell out at sea) it was an awesome experience. They swim so close to the cage that you can reach out and touch them. Don’t.
I was fascinated by them, not afraid of them. Their languid gracefulness is beautiful. From the safety of a cage. I bought a disposable underwater camera for fun to shoot underwater pics of these big fish. It disappeared from the boat. Nice.
I stumbled across Edition Fifty Fathoms, “The only art magazine of underwater photography”, on Facebook today and saw an incredible photograph taken by free diver photographer Fred Buyle. The photograph is of a free diver reaching out to touch a shark. Not a great white but a very large tiger shark.
I’m fascinated. I’m even more fascinated by the documentary film about Fred on Vimeo titled ‘He swims with sharks’.
Breathless.