SHARKMAN

“I have three and a half thousand dollars in my bank account and I’ve quit my job” I said “I can be there tomorrow morning.”

"You only regret the thing you don't do in life" I heard in the background.

"Krystian said you only regret the things in life that you don't do." Said S...

"but we've only known each other a month" I replied. I was delirious. Quitting a job is some thing.

"so?"

"Ok, I'll see you in the morning." I packed my bags, booked a ticket to Cairns airport and was on it the next morning a 6:00am.

When I arrived a cab driver took me to the seaside. He refused to wear any mask of any kind and shook my hand as I got out of the cab. "up there is the market" he pointed to the water "and back there is ya hostel" he pointed in the other direction.

I sat down and looked at the water and an old lady yelled at me "GIVE ME TEN BUCKS" so I pulled out my wallet and handed her a ten dollar note "MAKE IT TWENTY" she said an looked off into the distance.

Two days later I was on a boat imagining myself as Captain John Shandy. Luke Shandy I called myself. Tim Powers, if you ever read this, I hope you're proud of me. I swilled rum from a plastic hip flask I'd bought the night before. Someone threw up over the edge of the boat. Several people crouched down on seats and held their heads inbetween their knees.

I jumped and clicked my heels together as the boat rocked to and fro. We were in the middle of a storm. "I'M CAPTAIN LUKE SHANDY!" I yelled "BRING IT ON! TURN UP THE WAVES! IF YOU DON'T I"M GOING TO WRITE A VERY TERSE LETTER TO THE BERAU OF WEATHER!!!"

"SIT DOWN." yelled Gus, one of the dive instructors, and wiped his long blonde hair out of his face and look off toward the coastline. Then he added "don't any of these f***heads check the weather report before they come on these trips."

I didn't know anyone on the boat except S... and we'd really only just met each other. She'd been very concerned when I told her I'd quit my job but was very happy to see me on the boat, away from the rest of the world.

The boat finally stopped. Gus got up and announced "WELCOME TO THE GREAT BARRIER REEF, now come inside the main cabin and we'll talk diving rules."

Gus went through it sharp and true. He'd been at it a while we could all tell; well at least I could.

"Will we see sharks?" I guy named Roger piped up "I'm a documentary filmmaker."

Gus replied "I don't control the sharks but yeah man, they're definitely out there; all types - white pointers and all sorts."

Anyways, Roger was rushed into the medical cabin after the first dive. He'd run out of air somehow. He claimed he was an experienced diver, like I had too. "I've been diving my whole life" he once said to me. I'd only been diving once before in my life and it was 19 years and eleven months before I found myself on this boat with these people from all over the world.

After a few dives, three each day actually; it was very intense, I was up on the deck hiding from the rain smoking a cigarette. Gus came out of the crew quarters and lit one too.

"Fuck this job." he said

"Yeah?"

"Yeah man, fuck this. Roger has cost me a LOT of paperwork."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, I'm going slug hunting after this trip, up off Darwin; I've had enough."

"What's slug hunting?" I asked.

"There's some divers up there that catch sea slugs and send off them off to be eaten; they're a delicacy or some shit. Then, I'm going starfish huntin'."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"There's a starfish plague on the reef" and I could tell in his voice that he really cared about the world, but also probably more about his own life "people dive up there and pick up starfish, put 'em in bags and send 'em off to die - it's a damn plague man."

"Is that so" I replied.

"Yeah man, wanna come too?"

"Nah, I got my own stuff goin' on."

"Nah worries" he said, stubbed out his cigarette under a NO SMOKING sign and went back inside to the crew quarters.

Then an young Indian man came up and sat down beside me as I looked up at the black clouds. There were little lights off in the distance which disappeared and then reappeared again as the boat bobbed back and forth.

"You excited about seeing the sharks tonight?" he asked.

"Sure am." I nodded.

"So am I, I love diving; my father gave me some inheritance so I can be a diving instructor - I want to go back to India to be a dive instructor but the problem is there's no tourists at the moment. Everyone in India is so poor. If you even put a bin outside some motherfucker is so poor they'll steal it."

"Is that so" I replied.

That night Gus explained all the hand signals the groups had to use under water. He explained them clearly. Hard; but fair. Later, he told me people die all the time on these trips and he hated it more than anything.

After all the diving we'd done I'd explicitly made it my mission to make myself ready to get in the water first each time. That was the key to seeing underwater creatures - before everybody else had scared them off into hiding.

Gus had explained how to use a torch underwater "if you see a shark and it worries you, shine the light in it's eye and it'll go away"

We all jumped in and checked out air and compasses and weights. We flated and deflated our equipment and started swimming after Gus. He kept turning around to check on us and counting the little red and blue lights on our oxygen tanks as we went along to make sure were were still there.

He flashed his light at a small fish and suddenly "BAM!" something blue struck out of nowhere and swam off.

We bopped around in the water but it seemed angrier at the surface than it down under the water. You could just reach out and touch the sand but I didn't want to touch a thing.

Gus flashed his light between two big mushrooms of coral and signed to us all. Then he pointed to where the light shone. A shark, about two meters long was floating there with an eye like an underwater lizard.

We saw several more sharks on the dive. It went successfully. We saw turtles, and nemo fish in some sort of tendril coral stuff - I've never seen that movie but people talk about it all the time; especially in Australia.

At the end of the dive I got up into the main cabin and they served us up meals. We all ate, and ate, and then people started drinking and sharing stories about financial gain and a whole heap of things I wasn't interested in. I was drawing a picture of shark in my note book.

"A white pointer" the cook said as she leaned over my shoulder.

"You see some of those down there?"

"Yep" I smiled.

"Looks good" she replied.