May 26, 2000

MONDAY

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I have stopped telling my friends I'm going diving with sharks. Their reactions have been less than encouraging.

"Isn't that, ah, fairly dangerous?" asks one, a marketing VP. "You'll be inside a cage, right?" asks another, an editor. Lastly, from a left-brained attorney: "Sounds like a death wish to me."

My tack has been to smile inscrutably and explain that sharks are generally shy, that a cage won't be necessary -- and, indeed, I am more likely to be attacked and bitten by a domestic pig than a shark. "Jaws" did this to us, I remind them, portraying every sleek, dorsal-finned creature as a demonic eating machine with a pea-sized brain. In fact, I say, "Snouts" would be a far more realistic danger.

No one laughs.

To reassure myself, I call up a more reasonable and informed friend, Dr. John McCosker at the California Academy of Sciences. McCosker, a renowned ichthyologist, has co-authored a book, "Great White Shark," on the most dangerous of the breed. He sets me straight.

"Sharks have a lot more to fear from us than we do from them," explains McCosker. Worldwide, they are over-fished for fins, meat and sport. Out of 368 species, only four -- the great white, bull, tiger and oceanic whitetip -- have been involved in unprovoked attacks, and then only on the rarest of occasions.

Worldwide, says McCosker, there are an average of 100 attacks on humans yearly -- with about 30 fatal. But most of those are on swimmers or waders in shallow water, and most are cases of bite-and-run in which the human was mistaken for a more tasty seal or sea turtle.

McCosker also tells me it was probably a great white -- instead of a whale -- that swallowed Jonah. "The good news is, he was spit back up."

I lodge all this comforting information safely inside my brain.

Outside my brain, in that little place in my mammalian stomach that secretly replays the theme to "Jaws" every time I imagine a mouth full of sharp teeth coming at me, things are still a bit unsteady.

I admit it: I do have an underlying, visceral reaction to this whole idea. Maybe it comes from the prospect of entering the ocean and getting bumped a couple of notches down the food chain by another species that's faster, stronger and, on occasion, even more merciless than humans. Downsizing may be brutal, but it has nothing on a shark attack.

More to the point, I'm also a genetic victim of the fight-or-flight syndrome. We battle fear in great explosions of adrenaline, or we run. That was a useful reaction when we lived in caves or hid back in the tall grasses. But now that we are civilized, a more rational response is required. If I could deal with my most dramatic fear of all -- the prospect of being eaten -- I could learn to cope with most anything.

I pack my scuba diving gear, toss in some clothes and head for Fort Lauderdale, Fla. There I will hop aboard something called Island Express for a flight to the southernmost edge of the Bahamas and my rendezvous with aquatic, dorsal-finned destiny.

WEDNESDAY

The twin-propped Cessna 402 from Island Express Airlines taxis to a stop on the runway at the international airport at Long Island in the Bahamas. The off-white plane, apparently in the midst of re-painting, has been spot-sprayed in bursts of green, as if a kid with an aerosol can went on a rampage. It didn't fly yesterday because of mechanic problems.

The runway is a narrow, rutted strip of asphalt thick with black tire skid marks -- including a few that our own earring-studded pilot just left. The airport is a two-room wood and stucco hut split in half by a patio. A wind sock flies at the edge of the runway, not far from the turquoise sea. I'm clearly in a Jimmy Buffett song.

A large, black-skinned man comes out to greet me and picks up my gear as it's offloaded from the plane. Like other Bahamians, he speaks in a lilting patois, a blend of African and old English flavored by 300 years of island living. He piles my two bags onto a wood bench marked "Customs." I hand him my passport and he smiles, no mon. He is a taxi driver.

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