Shark Dive In one piece and telling the tale!

26 March 2010

So I'm back from the weekend and what an incredible experience it all was.

Last weekend I signed up to do a shark dive in the Blue Planet Aquarium tank in Liverpool. We were very fortunate to have this opportunity as there are only a small handful of places where you can actually do this in Europe.

So the day started off in Greenwich meeting the UDare group and together we set off on the journey, but not before we sort out the beeping door that wouldn't shut!

After resolving that, our journey begun and soon we'd be heading down the long highway to our northern destination. After making a few minor driving mistakes and having to turn back after realising wed gone a little too far north, we finally reached the aquarium 4 hours later!

Our allotted time was at 2pm and after some quick introductions, we got straight into it. The safety briefing and a short intro video was shown to us, followed by signing away various rights and form!

Soon after, we got truly stuck in as we headed into the preparation and training area and got suited up in our wetsuits. For this dive, we would not be swimming around as that would create too much attention in the tank full of sharks, so instead of flippers, we were kitted out with weight belts to weigh us down and wed be walking along the bottom of the aquarium in observation mode!

After an hour of training, learning about the basic hand signals and how to use the diving equipment, we were ready to get into the tank with the animals themselves.

This tank had 6 sand tiger sharks, all over 10ft and 4 lemon sharks, not to mention several other marine wildlife including moray eels, puffer fish, cravelle jacks and many other smaller fish.

2 by 2 the people entered and soon it was my turn to head in. With some trepidation and excitement I moved down into the tank and took my first breathes underwater in a tank full of sharks.

What an experience. To be truthful, it sounds more dangerous than it really is. When of course you look at the real statistics about how many deaths and injuries there really were in 2009 caused by sharks, there were zero deaths and only 4 minor injuries.

Of course, statistics aside, its still doesnt temper the emotions we feel as human beings, even if they dont have any grounds for being there. Anyways, it was pretty relaxing, comfortable and in fact I didnt feel I was in any danger at all.

Seeing the sharks up close and personal is an experience which is very humbling and also so incredibly fascinating its just something I would certainly recommend everyone give a go.

End of the day, I spent 45 minutes in the tank and we moved around to a few locations to observe the wildlife and it was just breathtaking.