Night of the Nurse Shark

I was doing a night dive off the M.V. Turks and Caicos Explorer (which I loved) when I hear a shout through a regulator behind me. I turn - in the dark mind you - to see a three foot long shark swimming between my fins and towards my torso. Immediately, my sphincter tightens and nearly swallows my wetsuit. Then I take a good look and I realize that it's just a dumb ol nurse shark, and a small one, at that, and that he's swimming lazily up the length of my body, towards my head.

I figure he somehow got caught up in the pack of divers and just wanted to swim by, so I do a barrel roll to let him pass, but he stays right with me, like a synchronized swimmer. He's still swimming up my body and now he's getting close to my mask and regulator, so I roll to the opposite side, but he stays with me again. At this point he is getting too close to my face and I take my camera and put the strobe right into the middle of his snout and gently push him away.

I mean, it wasn't like he was aggressive, it was more like he was needy. The shark swims away from me to the nearest diver, John, who is from, of all places, Philadelphia. John sees the shark and freaks. All of a sudden he is swimming on his back kicking with his legs spread like he is at the gynecologist's office and the shark is the doctor. And the shark keeps coming towards him, lazily, with not the slightest hint of aggression. And after all, it's just a Nurse shark.

It's starting to look like the shark just wants to rest his chin on the John's belly but John is flailing away with his arms and legs trying to get away in the most desperate and spastic backstroke that I have ever seen in my life.

Suddenly, things took a turn for the worse. I'm in real trouble because I'm laughing so hard that I'm getting water in my mask and regulator. As I'm choking and laughing and swimming over to John in order to push the shark away, I see him pull his arm back and punch the shark - right smack dead-on in the middle of his nose.

Nice punch, but the shark barely slows down. John keeps trying to work away, but the shark keeps up with him and this time, John, who is about 6'2" tall, in his early 20's, and quite muscular, takes his time, winds up and proceeds to punch the shark as hard as I have ever seen a punch delivered underwater. The shark was clearly stunned. It may have been the punch or it may have been the rejection, but at this point the shark swims off, clearly dejected.

After we surfaced and debriefed, it turned out the guy who yelled through his regulator to warn me about the shark pushed him away first. This shark had molested three divers in one dive. We weren't sure what he was doing, but he never bit or even bumped us. In a conversation a month later with Alex Mustard the biologist, he suggested that this nurse shark may have learned how to use divers lights to hunt for prey like Tarpon do in Florida and Jacks in Belize.

That was the only explanation that made sense of this sharks behavior save one; maybe he just liked boys. In any event, I was sure to thoroughly wash my wetsuit.