He came gliding silently or should I say quietly... but that is still describing sound rather than a way of being. He was not fussed or rushed. And it was clear he was not afraid. He took no notice of us although he had stopped us in our tracks. We were not stopped because of his size, he was not big, maybe only 4 feet long, but simply because of his presence. We could not see his eyes clearly, so we didn't know if he even looked at us as he slide between the small coral heads that filled the water around us. We watched him as some might watch Matt Damon walking across a New York City cross walk in nothing but a pair of shorts.

Our physical reactions were slightly different. I was holding hands with Isobel on the left and Lara on my right. Both Lara and Isobel gave me the repeated hand squeeze sign, which indicates something of great interest and pointed. Isobel kicked slowly forward, I imagined her wanting to see a little better. Lara slowly drifted behind me, I imagined her having flashbacks to JAWS (thank you Steven Spielberg and Peter Benchley).

Afterward on the beach, Isobel would describe him and correctly identify him as a Black Tipped Reef Shark. And Lara would concede that he was beautiful even though she perceived a malevolent glint in his eye.

This was not the first shark we had seen in the water. Actually, yesterday we saw a tiny shark, maybe 18" long swimming in the shallow cut between the Motus during our expedition. At the end of the day, when we were getting in the dinghy, we saw two 4' sharks in the shallow water. The last time we had been in the water with a shark was when we were on our Galapagos expedition on MV Evolution. We had traveled to Genovesa and for the snorkel outing they had taken us to a wall known to have sharks.

When the Ponga boat was close to a huge cliff, the guide had gone in the water first to scope things out. When she surfaced, she shouted, "Sharks!!" and we all jumped in the water and spent 45 minutes snorkeling in that spot. Even Lara dove down t12 or 15 feet to have a closer look at them. They were in the 8' to 12' range and swam up and down this wall. It was not clear to us or to the guides what drew them so predictably to this spot. Again, they completely ignored us. But that had been cooler (76F) water and the visibility was only about 20'.

Now, inside the Kauehi Atoll, the water is 81F and the water visibility is 50'. The photo shows where we saw the shark. Lots of little coral heads in 6 to 8' of water.