With three bags in tow, Dad and I boarded the pink and white bus idling outside Atlantis. Written on the side in large letters was "Stuart Cove". Stuart Cove 's Dive Bahamas is a dive company situated on the Southwest side of New Providence. We rode for the better part of 45 minutes until we arrived at a large complex that is Stuart Cove's Dive center. Stuart Cove's has worked on numerous TV shows and movies including the James Bonds For Your Eyes Only, Never Say Never Again, The World Is Not Enough, and Casino Royale, as well as Mythbusters, 20 000 Leagues Under The Sea, and Flipper. Open Water was filmed here and coincidently Dad and I were going on a dive boat to swim with sharks.

We registered and brought our gear aboard. The first dive was a wall dive, along the tongue of the ocean. This dive is meant to get you acclimatized to swimming with sharks. We geared up; I was the only person without a wetsuit and the only child. We jumped in to notice 50 yellowtail snapper in a clump under the boat. We descended to 40 feet and swam towards the wall. The coral was beautiful and the grouper aplenty. As we descended down the wall, a Caribbean reef shark appeared from the haze. My expectation of seeing my first was having to refrain from soiling myself, ceasing to breathe*, then screaming through my regulator and dashing off as fast as I can while hyperventilating. Both strangely and luckily that was not the case.

As the shark swam by I stared at it until it disappeared into the abyss. No freaking out, no soiling myself, just sitting there. It was not as freaky as expected but nerve raking nonetheless. This dive was a new experience for me because I had only ever been diving with 3 other people maximum but her there were 19 other divers around me. The nuisance that is lionfish was sure apparent. We saw 5 or 6 of these poisonous but beautiful fish. They are not supposed to be in Atlantic and are breeding twice as fast as they normally should. We ascended and spent part of our 30-minute surface interval in briefing for our second dive, the shark feeding!

With full body wetsuits, extra weight and a new tank of air we descended to a small patch of sand omuncst the coral garden. We were assigned seats marked by rocks. We found a comfortable position be it kneeling or sitting, deflated our jackets, put our components of our octopus and our hands in front of us and waited. Vivian, our petite dive-masters and shark feeder jumped in wearing a chain mail suit and a helmet and holding a chum bucket. We watched as 9 or 10 sharks appeared as the scent of blood was in the water.

Vivian would spear a head or piece of dorado or grouper from her basket with a metal spear and hold it out. Jacks and snapper would munch on the chum until a shark came. With the intensity of a blood thirsty killer the shark would rip the meat off the pole and chew it. Vivian would bring the chum towards you and sharks would brush by you, touching you occasionally. At ...We did this for 35 minutes and once Vivian left we could search for shark teeth. I found a small tooth. I think I was the only person to find one. Throughout the 40 minutes we were down I used a third of a tank, way less than normal.

That was one of the coolest thing I've ever seen. It taught me to respect nature, because it is stronger than you!