As I splash into the surface of the endless horizon of sea, beneath me is the strange and mysterious liquid landscape. Although I feel at home here, I am the stranger. An aquatic impersonator with a man made aqualung, cast aluminum holding high pressure air.
The cresting waves above shimmer with a kaleidoscope of rays that beam below in a radiating glow. The colours of the reef comes alive and the silent sentries patrol the reef as we the strangers explore their home.
Slowly, with smooth sly precision, the sharks approach with a stoic stare through their cat like eyes. The pupil, a vertical ellipse, ever fixed, watching. As they approach and close in, a last minute decision to about face and bear off at ninety degrees to begin the patrol again with military precision.
An iridescent platinum shimmer of incandescent silver skin that gleams in gold and returns to grey as the sharks swim as one massive muscle surging through the sea. The dermal denticles of their skin are like microscopic mail armour and give them a sandy rough texture that help to prevent parasites from latching on. Their skeleton is made of cartilage.
Like a spartan soldier, they are a mass of muscle. A well engineered organism, evolved through prehistoric times. A predator of precision in a perpetual fluid form, flowing water through the ocean, in continual flush of water that fills their gills to oxygenate their blood, in an O2 world.
Their eyes are focused on this mass of strangers with two foreign fins, often travelling in opposite directions. Other times, there are a few who mimic the mammal like thrust of a dolphin and others with two cylinders who match the amphibious movements of frogs. Strangers indeed. How peculiar is this alien terrestrial fish they see, that blows bubbles and carry cans upon their backs.
A lion fishes is spotted! Time to catch and release.
The bizarre stranger holding the yellow stick with three prongs, stretches the sling and spears the black and white striped barbed invaders. Pulling the hapless fish from below a shelf in the reef, the sharks go wild and draw near in a frantic frenzy as the stranger holds the great maned invader out. They circle in and calculate their approach. With open jaws they crunch down on the crispy spiny fish and their eyes role back to white discs as they furiously fight to free the fish from the three barbed prongs of the Hawaiian sling. The tiny remoras and accompanying jacks have their fill of the leftovers in the wake of the attack. Tiny tumbling snowflakes below are ivory like pearly whites that have fallen out from the sharks ample rows of replaceable razor sharp teeth.
At times they are intent on more and try to take the GoPro stretched out on a stick. Even the one I hold in my hand. Luckily for me a last minute decision has made them close their jaws and knock my hand and camera to the side. Thankfully I can still count the times this has happened with all my digits intact.
Let me find you more my sleek shark friends. When I return.
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