Koh Tao - Shark Bay

Here there be sharks

As a diversion from our usual diving activities we spent a lovely afternoon at a beach on the south of Koh Tao, Shark Bay, thus named as there are lots of reef sharks living there and you are pretty much guaranteed to see some when you snorkel there. Despite the fact that the beach is about 2km from our apartment we have so far failed to go there so it felt really good to be stretching our wings a bit!!!

Unfortunately the tide was very very low so we had to swim - well, almost drag ourselves over the reef to get to deeper water. About 300m out we were in water about 5 feet deep and we saw our first shark - a black tip reef shark about 4-5 feet long. It was swimming over there and minding it's business and was very cool. Then it swam back the other way...still cool. We drifted around for a bit and then Kieran pointed behind me...The bloody shark was heading straight for me!!! I wriggled around and he lost interest before getting close and I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Then we saw 2 baby sharks - maybe 2 feet long each. Very sweet, but when we sae another big one swim about we started getting a bit scared - I mean they were within 10 metres even if they weren't interested in us - so we headed back to shore.

We felt much happier when we were in about 1 foot of water, barely able to swim but too much coral to walk. And then it happened!! About 2 metres in front of me a great huge, well OK it wasn't that huge, 5ft shark swam right across my path. I'm not really a girlie girl but I must confess I screamed through my snorkel and swam pretty damn fast close to shore. I was pretty adrenalined up. I knew it wasn't going to hurt me but Jaws has had a big affect on me, evidently.

Finally as I approached the shore I felt a pull on my fins - BLOODY HELL THE SHARK IS BITING MY FINS I thought and I swam like the clappers (can clappers swim?) to the beach. I was crapping myself and called out to Kieran and looked behind me and it was Jason all along. He had come down to the beach to join us and had heard me scream I think and made his way behind me and grabbed my fins. I think I aged a year that afternoon.

Still. Snorkelling with sharks is very cool.