SMH Blogger’s Terrifying Brush With Death

“Adventure tourism” is a concept that I never really ‘got’, to be honest; if I’m going to have a holiday, chances are I’d rather spend it vegetating than risking death in a small sardine tin while being pelted down a waterfall in the middle of tornado season (or whatever).

However, when it comes to travel writing about adventure tourism, I appreciate the need to create a sense of danger, excitement, and living on the edge, maaan. Perhaps that’s what happened to SMH blogger Sam De Brito when he went on a shark dive – in a tank.

Recently, I had the opportunity to swim with the man-eaters at Mooloolaba’s Underwater World and it ranks as one of the most surreal, challenging half hours of my life.

If you’ve ever been paddling or surfing in the ocean and spotted a nearby shark, you’ll know it’s about as chilling a feeling as you can experience; every fibre of your being screams “GET OUT OF THE WATER, NOW!”

To voluntarily induce this meeting of man and fish thus runs counter to millions of years of evolution. Much like skydiving or driving very fast, your body knows you shouldn’t be doing it and to cope, coughs out primal chemicals which provide that rush adrenaline junkies hunt for.

Sinking into the busy blue of the Underwater World aquarium and seeing an eight foot shark cruising towards me put a lot of things in perspective. Whatever stresses and concerns I had prior to entering the water disappeared the moment I looked into the completely remorseless eye of a sand bar whaler.

Sounds scary and edgy, right? What a chill he must have experienced when he looked into that “remorseless eye” of that “man eater”.

Except for one thing: unless the sandbar shark thought Sam was a mollusc, it actually probably would’ve been pretty remorseful after all.

Underwater World’s own PR describes the dive experience as featuring “large but docile grey nurse sharks, sandbar whaler sharks, wobbegongs and bamboo sharks”, while according to the clearly learned people at the International Shark Attack Files, sandbar sharks have been responsible for “a total of 7 recorded attacks since 1580 with no deaths”. Now, I’m no mathematician, but 7 attacks in the last 428 years sounds like pretty wide odds to me.

But then again, “I had the opportunity to swim with the bottom-dwelling-fish-eaters” doesn’t really cut it in the adventure travel writing stakes, does it?