Mission Journal 7 — Jo Gascoigne: Day 5: Friday, July 18th, 2003
The school of baitfish is still with us under the habitat, despite the best efforts of the larger fish to finish them all off. They like to ball up around larger animals – perhaps they hope that this will protect them. However, the schools of predatory fish (yellowtail snapper, schoolmaster snapper and grey snapper mainly) have been getting more and more worked up and excited by the day, and they don’t seem to be afraid of anything any more, least of all us. Today we found that if we moved slowly and gently under the habitat ourselves, the bait-ball would form up around US! This meant that the snapper frenzy was directed right in our faces. We had hundreds of snappers right in front of our masks, between our legs, nipping at our arms and bumping into our dive gear. You could only tell where your buddy was by the bubbles and the cloud of snappers surrounding them! And it wasn’t only snappers. Three nurse sharks were right in the midst of things, as was a large stingray, which kept swimming backwards and forwards across my legs. I was keeping a close eye on its stinger, as far as I could see through the snapper cloud…
When the nurse shark started feeding right under my legs, bumping into me quite hard, I had to beat a retreat with my adrenaline levels at maximum. This was truly one of the most incredible diving experiences of my life. Only at Aquarius would we have the chance to do a two-and-a-half hour morning dive on science, and then spend our final half hour of bottom time being part of the reef! Twenty-four hours later, we are all still on a high.