What makes your heart race? Nerves? Anticipation? Fear? Uncertainty? If you answered all of the above, you were probably boarding local dive boats in Yap en route to outer reef dive sites just after daybreak. Zipping through the narrow mangrove channels in our speedboat, the only thing most of us were thinking about were deep sea creatures. Yapese stone money went by in a blur as we passed a small house. Once in open water, our guides brought us to a reef anchorage and made a big circle around the mooring. We jokingly said it was to wake up the sharks and let them know we had arrived. Our guide quietly nodded, “Pool’s open,” so we splashed down and were greeted with smooth, sinuous movements of several sharks. Before we could even arrive at the reef drop-off, we had sighted 10 or more sharks. Grey reef sharks slowly cruised the drop-off, occasionally passing closer for a quick inspection before vanishing out to sea. Behind us, in shallow water the quicker and more curious black-tipped reef sharks approached for inspection. All the sharks were small, five feet or less, but their fluid motion and effortless acceleration still caused us all to take notice.
The sharks eventually fell into a rhythm. Between their visits, we spotted bumphead wrasses and dogtooth tuna or were distracted by the flamboyant colors of friendly coral trout. However, when the sharks completed their circuit and returned to the divers, the fish played second fiddle to the shark’s Jimi Hendrix guitar solo.
In a world becoming increasingly devoid of top predators, the excitement of spending a leisurely hour underwater with quintessential hunters cannot be understated. Although manta rays made Yap famous, today they were a no-show. Luckily for all of us, the sharks at Vertigo picked up the slack and then some.
