I never thought the day would come when someone would yell "shark!" and I'd trip over myself trying to get into the water to swim with this animal I had been taught to fear.
This happened to me last week while on the last day of a four-day Great Barrier Island shark-seeking mission. Perhaps I was under the spell of Ocean Ramsey - aka the "shark whisperer" - ocean conservationist and eco tourism business owner. She'd flown in from Hawaii to work alongside local shark scientist Riley Elliott and his team who have been collecting valuable data to prove that New Zealand is a breeding and birthing ground for the blue sharks. Sadly the recent ban on shark finning means the blue sharks will not be protected until the end of 2016. This means up to half a million sharks will be killed for a bowl of soup.
There were six of us on the Great Barrier mission, and my primary role was to learn, and document the week's experience. Ocean is softly spoken, but with such a huge body of underwater experience behind her, the knowledge she shares is imparted with humble confidence and a deep, innate passion. She is also always quick to remind people that sharks are wild animals, and she's not out there trying to tame them. I think if anything she is trying to tame the wild accusations of the Jaws movie generation, and prove that sharks are actually highly intelligent, graceful animals.
During the first three days we only saw a couple of makos, which once again sadly proved that New Zealand's shark alley has become a shark graveyard. I went to sleep that night hoping that the next day, our final day of the mission, we would see blue sharks. The blues are a lot more docile than the makos, and the ones I knew the most about. If I was going to get in the water with a shark, it would be a blue shark.
By 9am the sun had burned through the clouds, the water was calm, and the underwater visibility perfect. Around midday a six-foot blue shark picked up on the scent of the berley we had hung from the end of the boat. Ocean and Riley went in first, while I stuck to the edge and watched their every move. The blue was curious, and hungry, and would sniff at the chum, and then go back to Ocean and Riley to investigate.
