Sharks

I’m not a water person.  I can’t swim that well although I’ve done some underwater photography, and I have an inner ear problem and can’t go that far underwater, but…

I’m shooting a commercial in the Bahamas about a woman swimming with sharks (in a cage). It turns out that the actress we cast, who assured us that she would get into the cage, has freaked out and won’t go.

We get a double for wide shots and will get her closeups in a pool in Los Angeles, but she still lied. I wondered how we could have cast with sharks but right now I want to feed her to the sharks that are swarming beneath our boat.

We’ve been assured that these are nurse sharks and are harmless.  Some of the crew have gotten into the water to ‘swim with the sharks’ and I decide to as well.  The boat crew gets me a wetsuit (to not attract the sharks with my over-white body). I hadn’t been getting along with them during the shoot for various unimportant reasons. They admonished the other crew in the water not to wear shiny objects. I notice that the suit they have given me has yellow stripes around the wrists and ankles. Shiny?  Retribution?

I get into the water but my snorkel facemask slips and fills with water. I clear the mask and swim over to the sharks. I look down and there are over a million sharks swimming about. They all look like great whites, and hungry.

Technically, I’ve swum with the sharks. I set a hundred meter world record getting back to the boat. I planed above the water like those ducks you see in the nature films.

I am not ashamed.