101 Things #28 - Dangerous Bathing

Normally, as I select items for my anti-bucket list 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die there is one feature of the suggestion from which I recoil. But in today's example there are two (with a third one cunningly hidden) so it was very easy for me to reject the notion proposed by Conde Nast Traveler that I should

Go swimming with sharks.

I can see why people might wish to swim with dolphins. Dolphins are intelligent, sociable, playful, enjoy interacting with humans and revel as much in hurtling out of the water as they do in effortlessly powering in it. They can also be nasty little sadists when given the chance to knock some hapless smaller animal about but who are we humans to judge?

Sharks are different. They exist to hunt and kill and appear to do little else. If a shipwrecked mariner sees dolphins swimming about his raft he may rejoice of their company. When a fin breaks the surface and circles, he pulls his feet well back, grips his oar tightly and prepares to do battle.

Why swim with them? Inside a cage, to have them eyeing you and up down and maybe batter away at it? Or swim free and spend all your time looking over your shoulder and hoping, really hoping very hard, that they've all just had a really enormous lunch and are simply out for a little light exercise to help it go down?

Pic: Seeker.com

I don't swim and don't enjoy being submerged. I certainly don't relish going anywhere near an omnivorous animal loaded with teeth like this. I might get a thrill from being so close to them and having their cold eyes giving me the once-over but what's in it for the shark? Is it considering how much of a struggle I might put up and whether it can get me unwrapped without getting too much swimsuit caught up in its teeth?



Now, we've got the swimming as one unwanted feature and the sharks as the second. What of the third, you ask? [Go on, ask, it'll make him feel better to know someone is taking an interest: Ed]. It is that, to get to anywhere where one can swim with sharks, it would be necessary to fly. Conde Nast themselves suggest Fiji, the Maldives, Mexico, the Bahamas, Australia or South Africa. Great, guys, thanks a million, assuming I did want to mix it with some of nature's toughest predators, I first have to run the gauntlet of airport security, endure the agony of a cramped economy seat for hours and then pay for an expensive holiday. How much carbon will be emitted to satisfy this whim for an adrenaline rush? Never mind other gases that might be emitted if one of these sods gets too close with jaws agape.

This activity definitely is one I'm happy not to have on my check list when the nice social workers in the care home ask me to reminisce.