“Half the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lost-ness,” renowned sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury once said.
I partly agree; & always seek the thin edge of every new locale when on any adventure trip. Always feel driven by this same muse, a lifetime search for sweet edges. One thing though, friends...I never feel lost anywhere. Never. Yet I avoid being found with enormous assertion & elaborate planning. Prefer to think of that drifty adventure aesthetic as "semi-foundness." So Ray & I basically agree... but for me it's this way -- when I travel there's a deep fondness for a partial foundness.
-- John Hessburg
Founder, Live-Aboards.com
& U.S. Dive Travel Network
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A short time ago, a friend & colleague (she's a smart dive shop owner, a strong diver & a lovely woman) sent a post into Google+ showing a big bull shark wheeling around, jaws gaping, heading for a diver. Here was our cheeky repartee:
JH: Now here's an interesting li'l specie -- the Bull Shark. Pretty mellow most of the time, until you scare one up from a deep sleep in the furthest recesses of an ink-black 6-by-6-foot cavern, tunneling 'bout 80 yards under a rock island in Tonga's Vava'u Group. Then bam! Cardio city... They are nice, until they're NOT...
She replied: Shhhh. I spend a good deal of time trying to convince new divers how safe sharks are. Great story and that's exactly why it happened, the shark was startled. If that Bull really wanted you, you wouldn't be here to write the story, right? ; )
JH: Howdy friend... Don't tell 'em that all species are safe, because it just ain't so, amiga del mar. I'm sure you'll agree that of the roughly 300 shark species most of us have dived with over the last 25 years, nearly all but about 5 or 6 are generally safe. And I'll stand firm on the need to be wary of edgy tempers with these artful dodgers -- Great Whites, SoPac tigers, bronze whalers, oceanic whitetips, hammers during certain lunar phases &....drum roll... bull sharks in a tight corner. Anyway, those were the days of the leg-strapped 10-inch combat blade. (Now lost to rust...) That bull might've wanted a chomp or two, I'll never know, but there would've been a good fight. As it turned out, he was so frightened, he bolted out of that tunnel at approx 20 wicked knots & swooshed past so abruptly -- less than a foot from my left shoulder -- that he made a water-wind. Spun me around in a near-180. Judging by the muscle mass that generated that vortex, he might've been pushing 2.5 meters & a solid 220-270 kilos. Though I'm guessing he was smaller than the bull shark up in this vid clip above... Good thing that ol' bull was not telepathic, or he would have sensed an embarrassing couple seconds of sheer fear -- that deep into the skinny Tongan cave. But the story has a happy ending. After making the equivalent of a "Whew - WTH?" sign into each other's torches, we decided to press on.... found that the tunnel transected the whole rock island. And after dipping to about 34 meters depth, we emerged into blissful daylight at about 30 meters on the windward shore of that little motu. One of the coolest dives I've ever enjoyed anywhere in the SoPac; & yep, adrenaline was like habanero sauce on the longish linguine of that cave foray... ;)
I partly agree; & always seek the thin edge of every new locale when on any adventure trip. Always feel driven by this same muse, a lifetime search for sweet edges. One thing though, friends...I never feel lost anywhere. Never. Yet I avoid being found with enormous assertion & elaborate planning. Prefer to think of that drifty adventure aesthetic as "semi-foundness." So Ray & I basically agree... but for me it's this way -- when I travel there's a deep fondness for a partial foundness.
-- John Hessburg
Founder, Live-Aboards.com
& U.S. Dive Travel Network
________________________________________________________________________
A short time ago, a friend & colleague (she's a smart dive shop owner, a strong diver & a lovely woman) sent a post into Google+ showing a big bull shark wheeling around, jaws gaping, heading for a diver. Here was our cheeky repartee:
JH: Now here's an interesting li'l specie -- the Bull Shark. Pretty mellow most of the time, until you scare one up from a deep sleep in the furthest recesses of an ink-black 6-by-6-foot cavern, tunneling 'bout 80 yards under a rock island in Tonga's Vava'u Group. Then bam! Cardio city... They are nice, until they're NOT...
She replied: Shhhh. I spend a good deal of time trying to convince new divers how safe sharks are. Great story and that's exactly why it happened, the shark was startled. If that Bull really wanted you, you wouldn't be here to write the story, right? ; )
JH: Howdy friend... Don't tell 'em that all species are safe, because it just ain't so, amiga del mar. I'm sure you'll agree that of the roughly 300 shark species most of us have dived with over the last 25 years, nearly all but about 5 or 6 are generally safe. And I'll stand firm on the need to be wary of edgy tempers with these artful dodgers -- Great Whites, SoPac tigers, bronze whalers, oceanic whitetips, hammers during certain lunar phases &....drum roll... bull sharks in a tight corner. Anyway, those were the days of the leg-strapped 10-inch combat blade. (Now lost to rust...) That bull might've wanted a chomp or two, I'll never know, but there would've been a good fight. As it turned out, he was so frightened, he bolted out of that tunnel at approx 20 wicked knots & swooshed past so abruptly -- less than a foot from my left shoulder -- that he made a water-wind. Spun me around in a near-180. Judging by the muscle mass that generated that vortex, he might've been pushing 2.5 meters & a solid 220-270 kilos. Though I'm guessing he was smaller than the bull shark up in this vid clip above... Good thing that ol' bull was not telepathic, or he would have sensed an embarrassing couple seconds of sheer fear -- that deep into the skinny Tongan cave. But the story has a happy ending. After making the equivalent of a "Whew - WTH?" sign into each other's torches, we decided to press on.... found that the tunnel transected the whole rock island. And after dipping to about 34 meters depth, we emerged into blissful daylight at about 30 meters on the windward shore of that little motu. One of the coolest dives I've ever enjoyed anywhere in the SoPac; & yep, adrenaline was like habanero sauce on the longish linguine of that cave foray... ;)
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