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| On Sunday
we the RIB picked up a few new passengers and we pushed off at 9am.
Due to the presence of two attractive young ladies the skipper deemed
it wiser to leave Dan on shore, rubbing sun tan lotion into where
his muscles ought to have been. |
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We kicked off at 9am with a good dive on the
Kintuck, a 4000 ton steamer sunk in 1917; it is unclear to this
day whether she hit a mine or was one of the last victims of UC-17,
a notorious German U-Boat know to be operating off the Peninsula
at that time.
The viz was good down at 34m and progress
was much enlivened watching Keith making his usual feet-first ascent
up the line. Keith found it quite a bit less amusing, but then he
is a Jock. |
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We
made our way back to the harbour under the strong Cornish sun, relaxed,
happy and pointing out a few of the favourite cliff-jumping spots
when your man Keith yelled out at the top of his voice
!!
"SHARK" !!
Dave spun the RIB around and we just caught
the fluke of a pretty little four meter Basker disappearing under
the water. This was it, the Holy Grail: a Basker sighting, the boys
were definitely back in town! |
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We waited a while
but the lad wasn’t coming back so we continued on back along
the coast, silent and eyes riveted to the water now, and scarcely
two hundred yards further were another two, moving in slow easy
strokes and feeding on the surface. Dave cut his engine at a respectful
distance and we slowly drifted closer.
The divers zipped up, masked up and slipped
quietly into the water to make our way out to where the sharks were
feeding. The two of them were clearly feeding together, covering
long, lazy figures of eight on the surface about twenty meters away
from us but never more than ten meters away from each other.
Obviously curious they doubled back and circled
us, feeding and eying us up as they passed around and amongst us
for a good ten minutes. |
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were only little ‘uns, three and a half meters from tip to tail,
but it was a magnificent experience to share the water with them,
up close. Inevitably after some minutes they decided that enough was
enough and headed away. I can’t rule out that they saw Rob as
a too much competition for the plankton, 'cos from some angles he
does resemble a large Basker that’s let itself go a bit. |
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Glowing and thrilled
to bits we hauled ourselves back into the RIB, mouths going fifteen
to the dozen, all pumped up. |
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Unbelievably, within
minutes we spotted a fourth Basker ambling along, and even from
a distance he was clearly much larger than the others, easily over
7m.
Again Dave brought us to within a safe distance
and we slipped into the water. I took a moment to put on my fins
and so was the last in, and by the time I’d cleared my mask
the group was a good ten yards away from me.
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| I made
my way to their starboard side to get an unobstructed view and we
watched this bad boy feeding, right up on the surface, his dorsal
fin and back out of the water. Obviously wary of Rob and Keith bicycle
kicking towards him, the shark gently curved away and came back to
the RIB, in a straight line towards me. As he came within sight distance
I ducked under the surface of the water and saw him looking right
at me, his enormous mouth gapping wide open, beadily eying me up and
ponderously powering his huge body through the water. As he came to
within two or three meters he dropped down slightly and passed directly
beneath, allowing me to gently run my hand along his flank and over
his dorsal fin. It was an intense experience and words fail me.
As if that wasn’t enough he looped right around and came
back, very slowly and inquisitively, his mouth gaping wide open
so that I could see right inside. I could have fitted right into
his mouth and not touched the sides he was that big, but he dropped
down beneath me once more; it was truly amazing.
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We returned to the
harbour, buzzing and alive, to tell Dan of our fantastic experience
and share the joy with him. The poor lad, been instructing down in
St Ives for near three months now and he’s still not seen a
Basker. |
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