Roger Yazbeck >>> The Freediver's Diary - first encounter with sharks

My First Encounter with Sharks...

In November 1996, I was spear fishing while freediving in Kfar Abida, a beautiful village on the sea, 70 km north of Beirut, Lebanon. I love this area for many reasons; the water is clean, and the beach from which I get to the water is the private property of good friends of mine. So, there's always someone to keep an eye on my car and other personal belongings, while I'm in the water. Also, I should note that this area rests on one of Lebanon's most important fresh water reserves, and in many spots while diving there, the water temperature would drop suddenly due to the gush of the underwater fountains. This is very interesting for a spear fisherman, as it attracts many different fish species.
The only inconvenience there is that its reefs are rather deep. From 8 to 25 meters.
I was scanning a 13 m deep reef area, when I spotted a sargo (silver bream) sneaking inside a crevice... I dove down, hit the bottom and shot. While pulling it out of the crack, I realized that my legs were bleeding, having sustained a rather nasty cut on my left thigh, in addition to numerous less serious ones, from the razor sharp rock edges, as I was not wearing my wet suit pants...I swam back up to string the fish to my floater. I looked back down, and I saw 3 medium sized amber jacks. I dove back but couldn't take a shot, as they swam past me in a hurry. So I surfaced, and took the mask off my face to blow my nose, put it back, and as I looked down there again, there it was... circling at the bottom. My heart stopped beating in panic and I couldn't feel my legs and knees anymore... my lower body felt like cold jelly. I was trying not to lose sight of it, and at the same time, I was worried about a possible second one closer to the surface behind me or near me!!! I was scared like hell, let me tell you... It wasn't big... about 1.5 m long, dark gray, but the sight of it gliding in the water like an astronaut moves in space, fascinated and terrified me... swift and gracious... Looked like the blue shark (back home, I checked it the encyclopedia). After one minute, it just swam up in my direction; its front resembled a jet plane's in a slow motion ascent... so I aimed my gun at it as it got closer.. it stopped about 3 to 4 meters away from me, looked quickly in my direction, then went back down circling for another minute, as if it was telling me it was not scared of me, and that this place is it's territory, not mine. God! I could almost hear John Barry's "Jaws" music! :)... so I started swimming backwards, in order to keep eye contact, until it disappeared. I stayed closer to the shore in 7 to 8 meters depths for about 20 minutes. Then, I thought to myself: "if I don't go back to get my floater with the stringer, I'll look ridiculous!"... so, after some time, I swam back to my floater. As soon as I got there, I saw the second shark... over 2 meters in length ( I tell you that, because later, I measured the distance between two rocks it had swam over and covered with its length) This one was of the same specie... circled also at the bottom without surfacing or trying to swim further up at all. It seemed very relaxed. I was less scared this time, because I thought to myself if the first one didn't approach me, in spite of my bleeding legs and the wounded fish hanging nearby, this should clearly mean this shark specie was not dangerous. I observed it for about 4 minutes.
That day, I shot and landed 2 big stingray fish (It is exactly the same fish as the one you see in the screen saver "Dangerous Creatures" in Windows 95!!! ). They weighed 17 kg each. I borrowed a friend's Toyota 4 WD Tercel Station wagon to take them to a fishery where they filleted them for me!. The sad part is that they started delivering their babies at the shore!!! First time I see this! They delivered between 6 to 8 fully developed and alive baby fish EACH, which I put back in the water! Three days later, the visibility was awful... I stayed close to the shore trying for the smaller groupers and perches. I saw the third shark. same size as the first one. But in a different area. Could've been the same one. I couldn't tell. It happened so fast, as I only saw it for about 5 seconds.
I also crossed many sea turtles. Some small ones, the size of steering wheel, and two really big ones. The biggest one, in about 9 to 10 meters of water only, was lying at the bottom, so I started diving and getting closer and closer... At the end, I tried to touch its back and it swam away in panic. You could have made a bed for a teenager with its shell! But I just couldn't shoot at it... I mean really a really big animal! I aimed at its head for fun, and it felt as if I was aiming at a big dog's head! I couldn't do it... too beautiful creature...

From an e-mail to Mr. Ata Bilgili on March 4, 1997

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