Sharks are almost universally described as horrible animals. As best I can tell, this sentiment is largely because it is impossible for anything good to happen when a shark is around. For instance, when a shark is nearby, sometimes people have important extremities ripped from their bodies. Sometimes people are killed. But nobody has ever won the lottery with a shark around, which leads me to believe that the shark's reputation is well deserved.
And thus I shivered slightly as I waded timidly into a tank full of sharks twice my height and three times my weight at the Adventure Aquarium, protected only by my wetsuit and my somewhat limited self-defense skills, which I honed years ago at Roaring Tiger Martial Arts Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Actually, the water was very cold, but the sharks also looked scary. My guide, who was apparently some sort of shark expert, told me not to worry because she had fed the sharks a few days before. This knowledge provided very little in the way of comfort.
I was also not particularly encouraged by the aquatic skills of my two fellow shark-swimmers. One had quite a bit of trouble keeping the nose of his snorkel mask from inverting itself, and the other could swim about as well as Stephen Hawking walks. They seemed like the kind of people who are highly susceptible to shark attacks, so I wanted to be as far away from them as possible once we were in the water.
Unfortunately, I was required to stay with them at all times. And as it turned out, I was the swimmer attracting all the sharks. Several times the guide had to redirect what she called a "playful" (read: terrifying) sand tiger shark away from swimming into my face, and I twice made direct eye contact with a very large sandbar shark as it swam slowly in front of me. I waited tensely for it to turn its head and bite my arm off, but it continued on as though I wasn't even there.
So nothing terrible happened, which is of course the best possible outcome when one is swimming in a tank with 26 sharks. It wasn't exactly a life-affirming experience, but at least I learned that sharks won't attack you if they're fed well. And now I can say that I swam in a vat with flesh-eating, fear-mongering people-eaters. Victory is mine!
