Another glorious sea day as we continue our track south, French Polynesia getting closer with every nautical mile sailed. The captain’s daily talk reminds us of the 4,500 metres of water below us. Each day he also offers a little advice, today it’s: “if you think life has given you melons, maybe you’re dyslexic.”
We leave our cabin for a couple of talks. The first is Brent Nixon. Today he’s presenting on blacktip reef sharks. He shows images and footage of these magnificent creatures. They’re the ones you’ll actually meet here, easy to spot by the black margin on their fins, rarely more than a metre and a half long, and homebodies in the truest sense, often sticking to the same quarter-square-mile patch of reef for most of their lives, only leaving to mate or give birth. They’re shy, easily spooked, and feed mostly on small reef fish, crabs, and shrimp rather than anything that would notice a swimmer. Around Moorea, researchers have found the females are philopatric too, meaning they tend to return to the exact spot where they themselves were born to give birth, generation after generation on the same stretch of shallow reef flat.
Brent talks a little about shark “attacks,” saying these reef sharks don’t see humans as food, even if you were bleeding. I’ve booked a tour for Moorea where we’ll get a chance to swim with sharks, rays, and turtles. I’m incredibly anxious about this.
In 1975, when I had just turned ten, Mum and Dad had the idea of taking my three brothers and I to see Jaws. It’s December, school holidays are just about to start, and we all dress up for a Saturday night in the city. We queue and buy tickets after parking in Market Street. Try that today. I remember like it was yesterday, Mum complaining about the price of tickets, it cost $12 for the six of us.
Little did they know the impact this movie would have, not only internationally, but on their four boys. The opening scene was horrific and traumatic, Mum and Robert walked out as Chrissy Watkins is mauled, her screams resonating around the theatre. Mum spends the rest of the night sitting in the foyer of the magnificent State Theatre in Sydney. Next, Ben joins them as Alex Kintner is thrown into the air and taken by the shark, another gruesome scene.
Dad, David, and I are left. The movie moves on. Matt Hooper is introduced as Amity tries to come to terms with what’s happening.
Then it’s time for the Ben Gardner scene. Brody and Hooper are out on Hooper’s boat. I always wonder why they went out on Quint’s boat later, when Hooper’s was so much better. Anyway. Hooper is diving as they find Gardner’s boat, underwater he extracts a tooth, and then it happens, the scene that ended me. The mangled head of Gardner appears and I almost pee my pants. I hide in Dad’s arms for a few minutes before heading out to join Mum, Ben, and Robert. After the movie I ask Dad and David what happened. I feel sad that the shark was blown up in the end.
It takes me 50 years until I see the movie on the big screen again, but I’ve seen it now a hundred times. It’s my favourite movie. It sparked a love of sharks in me. When it was first shown on TV a few years later I recorded it onto cassette, not video, and listened to it incessantly in bed.
I’ve sponsored great white sharks, donated to shark causes, and continue to read and learn about them. I even followed Deep Blue on her journey, the largest great white shark ever recorded: https://centerforsurfresearch.org/deep-blue-shark/
I haven’t been in open water since 1975.
So will I swim with sharks in a few days’ time? Who knows.
The next lecture is about New Zealand. We port there for a couple of days after French Polynesia. Mary-Amanda Fairchild presents an interesting history of the country. New Zealand holds the distinction of being one of the last major landmasses on Earth settled by people, East Polynesian voyagers arriving deliberately by double-hulled canoe, navigating by stars, ocean swells, and bird flight paths, somewhere around 1300 CE, give or take a few decades either side depending on which archaeological evidence you favour. Tradition credits the navigator Kupe as the first to find the islands. Over the following centuries those settlers became the Māori, developing a culture and language distinctly their own, adapting to a far cooler climate than the tropical islands most had left behind, which meant hunting, fishing, and gathering mattered more than the crops they’d grown up with. Europeans didn’t even know the place existed until the Dutchman Abel Tasman sighted the coast in 1642, and it was another 127 years before James Cook arrived in 1769 and properly charted it. Māori culture, land, and sovereignty remain very much live threads in New Zealand today, not just history, something we’ll see for ourselves in a couple of days.
After the talks our afternoon is filled with a couple of visits to the lounge, some lunch, which was a delicious lemongrass soup, mushroom pappardelle, and lamb cutlets.
Afternoon trivia is great, we score 18/20 today. We’re currently 6 points off the lead, so hopefully that score helps. There are 56 teams competing, it’s a popular event.
We then enjoy our cabin. The sun is shining, and as we track south the afternoons don’t feel as humid. So we enjoy the sun as it sets. We opt for a late dinner and casino night. Katarina brings us a charcuterie and cheese board to enjoy before dinner, along with a couple of drinks. We chat to her about her homeland and the complexities of long periods at sea, not being able to make lasting friendships as people move around. She’s thinking of returning to her homeland at the end of this contract. Ten months at sea is a long time.
We then head off to dinner. Burrata, duck consommé, udon vegetable noodles (spicy), and slow-cooked beef.
After dinner we play roulette, getting some money back as a few of our numbers appear, then play some craps, before finishing with the wolf and three piggies. It’s time for bed, so we cash in our chips, ready for another night.
