On swimming with sharks, interbeing, and an unrelenting love of paradise.
It was July, smack dab in the middle of a scorching summer in the Bahamas. I had been living on a boat, the RV Coral Reef II, for a week or so with ten other high schoolers from across Illinois.
Our days were filled activities a young aspiring marine biologist could only dream of. We snorkeled, several times a day, and even got to do a nighttime snorkel through the SS Sapona shipwreck. We conducted marine research, collecting water samples and studying the different Caribbean reef fish, learning the difference between a Queen Angelfish, a Sergeant Major, a Rock Beauty and a Blue Tang. We explored several of the smaller islands throughout the Bahamas, traipsing around land so foreign and unfamiliar to the flat planes (Illinois) we were used to back home. We also got to know each other deeply, talking about the many things 16 and 17 years old stuck on a boat in the Caribbean would talk about.
One day, during the middle of our trip, our captain, Captain Dave, anchored the ship and gathered us near the front of the boat. As we got settled, he shared a few facts about the site we’d just anchored at. The site, Triangle Rocks, was a place boaters typically came to chum the water. “Because of this,” he says, “it’s common to see sharks. It’ll also be where we’re snorkeling for the day.”
Uh. My heart began to race.
Because. What I haven’t told you yet is that I had been obsessed with sharks. My fascination with sharks grew after watching the Deep Blue Sea for the first time with my father in the basement of our home. Every summer, I curled up on the couch to tune into Shark Week, where I glared amazed at episodes of MythBusters, at stories on shark attacks, and of documentaries about the Great White Shark. Later, in high school, I found a job during the school year at the Shedd Aquarium, where, on my breaks, I’d often sit mesmerized, meditating with the sharks in the background, taking in their mysteriousness, their grace and their power.
I eventually signed up for a High School Marine Biology Program through the Shedd, a 3-week program where high schoolers spend a week in the Bahamas, acting out and living out their dream of being marine biologists. It was a dream of mine, and I specifically wanted to study sharks.
So yes, I had a deep penchant for sharks. But while I loved sharks… I wasn’t so sure I was ready to get in the ocean with them. This defied all logic; sharks were to be stared at on the TV screen, where I sat comfortably on my couch. They were to be admired from afar through thick glass in an exhibit, not seen and experienced up so closely.
Also, what in the hell were my parents going to think?! Did we sign a waiver for this?
Back on the boat, as we lathered SPF40 sunscreen across our bodies, grabbed our snorkeling gear, and headed to the stern of the boat, I searched the faces of my friends for any fear or anxiety; I saw none.
I sat down to put on my snorkeling fins and that's where the real fear began to sink in. I saw a snapshot of the Chicago news back home, blaring “Chicago girl pulled to the depths of the sea by a Caribbean Reef shark.” I imagined the devastated faces of my parents and family; of all the ways to lose a child, especially a child from the South Side of Chicago, getting eaten by sharks was not one of them.
Fear consumed me, ate me alive sitting at the back of the boat. But also, another force taunted me. Because if it were true, if I really loved sharks as much as I said I did, I would do it. When else would get an opportunity like this? To see these species I'd admired for so long, up close. I would have to push past the fears, push beyond the ancestral warning bells designed to keep me safe, and I’d have to jump.
And so I did.
The sound in my ears began to shift, becoming more muffled, as I slipped into the water. I began to feel the current of the waves pushing me back and forth. A fogginess arose in my goggles, blurring the view and a mini panic seeped in because if I couldn’t see, I couldn’t survive in an ocean full of sharks. I quickly figured it out, clearing out the fog with some spit, as we were trained to do.
As I got settled, I looked down into the water, and not 20 feet below me, was a small gray shark, careening through the water with the gracefulness of a ballerina. I looked over to my right, to my left; in the background sat an expansive and vibrant reef, with a touch of coral bleaching, and all I can see were gray bodies torpedoing through the water.
My fear and anxiety slowly began to fade and another feeling took over; one of awe. Of euphoria. The ecosystem as a whole came into focus — the coral, the jellyfish invisible to the eye, the other Caribbean fish that call the reef home — and I felt an intense oneness with all life in that ocean. If the gates of heavens had opened and downloaded the most simple and pure feelings of interbeing, of interconnectedness with all things on life into my body, that moment was it.
***
After that experience out there in the water with the sharks, I desperately sought out more moments that would thrust me back into what I felt out there in the Bahamas. During my freshman year of college, I spent five weeks in Hawaii, traveling across the Hawaiian islands, learning about the people and history of the different Hawaiian islands. I traveled to National Parks in Costa Rica, explored volcanoes in Nicaragua. I went swimming with bioluminescence in Halong Bay, Vietnam, I explored the trails and waterfalls in the Caribbean island, Dominica. And I have many other journeys ahead, all motivated by a desire to micro-dose hits of this planet we call home. Hits that make me feel small, but in the best way possible. Hits that make me feely deeply connected to all beings and all life. Hits that leave me feeling inspired and invigorated.
Each of these moments helped me reconnect with a source of energy, the pulse of life, and helped remind me of how bountiful this paradise on Earth we live on is, despite the tragedy and devastation we see so often play out in front of us.
A quote, but one of my favorite Buddhists, says,
“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.” - Thích Nhất Hạnh, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth
Especially during a time when the environmental movement, with valid reason, has left out a lot of the Earth/environmental/conservation framing (the polar bear climate narratives and Sierra Club’s of the world get a bad rap), I came to this work initially because of my deep reverence for nature. I’m afraid of what waits, for the species, for the oceans, for the forest, on the other side of a changing climate.
Also. There are times when I’m completely overrun by feelings of immense fear. Times when I am unable to overcome or navigate my worries. And I come back to this story, as a reminder of the courage that lives inside of me. That I have been, and can be, brave. That I can jump.
The work I do at present, work of organizing around climate justice and fighting to protect the planet, stems from that moment out there in the water. That moment of pushing past my fears, jumping into the unknowns of the ocean, and swimming with sharks.
