Tatjana the Shark and I

I pulled Tatjana closer to the shark. A nurse shark, it was five feet long and laying on the bottom basking in the warm water of the Caribbean. At first she did not notice it, so I started frantically thrusting my hand at my head at a perpendicular angle, the sign for shark. Suddenly she saw the majestic creature, and a look of absolute horror washed over her face. She tried to wrench her hand out of mine, but I dragged her closer anyway. After a few minutes of staring anxiously at the peaceful nurse shark I was able to convince her to come closer to this magnificent creature.

Bubbles issued from my regulator more quickly than usual when I spotted a five foot long nurse shark lying on the other side of a rock surrounded by coral. Its gills moved slowly up and down to pump oxygen into its bloodstream. Nurse sharks are one of the few species of sharks that can oxygenate their blood without moving, most sharks need a constant flow of water over their gills to keep them breathing. I grabbed Tatjana’s hand clenching my fingers around hers. With my other free hand I slammed it into my mask miming a sharks fin. All the while my legs pumped furiously in the slow moving water moving us slowly closer to the object of my curiosity. As we rounded the rock and I pointed enthusiastically at the shark, she stared. Her pupils slowly widened in comprehension of what she was seeing. Tatjana's hand clenched mine as though we were in an arm wrestling match. Her flippers moving through the water as fast as humanly possible. I wouldn’t let her hand go and kicked just as furiously in the other direction, we were caught in a stale mate. Eventually the bubbles issuing from her regulator began to slow, and she slowly allowed me to pull her closer to beautiful and mysterious elasmobranch.

I created a slight vacuum in my diaphram causing the thin rubber piece in the demand valve regulator to move towards my mouth. Because of this air started to flow into my lungs were it traveled through my lungs oxygenating my blood so that I could swim in the water. My heart pumped the blood from the left ventricle throughout my body allowing to stay warm and move in the 80 degree water. How strange it is that we have found a way to breathe underwater. I exhale pushing the rubber piece back, stopping the flow of air, and creating round shaped bubbles struggling through the denser water to the surface. My eyes sent a series of synapses to my brain allowing me to see the coral around me. The zooxanthella algae living on the coral. It creates sugar in a process called photosynthesis with the sunlight that is able to penetrate the water. Through a symbiotic relationship this feeds the polyps allowing them to live, and the coral provides a home for the algae. The zooxanthella algae gives the coral its beautiful colors. Lying amongst the coral is a five foot long elasmobranch, a nurse shark. The grey skin was jagged yet not, for if I was to stroke it, one way would feel smooth an the other would feel as though I had ran my had over sand paper. I took another breath more quickly this time because of the dopamine released in my brain. I was overjoyed to see such a large shark out in the open instead of under a rock where nurse sharks usually hide.