Shark Diving

Lee Ann, Jessica, Mark, Nadia and Daniel

I recently went to Busan to go shark diving at the Busan Aquarium. A friend of mine, Jessica, had been wanting to do it for a long time, and when she invited me to come along, I thought, "why not?" We got a whole group together, even though only four of us actually dove. It was Nadia, Lee Ann, Jessica, Daniel, Amy and Mark, my boyfriend. Since we were diving on Sunday, we had all of Saturday to hang out on the beach, which would have been excellent had the weather been warmer. I had worn my dress and bathing suit in anticipation of a beach day, but what we ended up getting was a whole lot of cold wind that even my beach towel wrapped around my shoulders couldn't keep out. I did however get in the water because it's nearly impossible for me to be near the ocean without putting my feet in it! I seriously considered actually swimming, but considering I didn't have any other clothing to wear for the rest of the day, I didn't think walking around in a wet bathing suit while being blasted by cold wind would do my health any good.

Very happy to be in the water.

Because we're, as a whole, indecisive, a lot of time was spent sitting on the beach throwing ideas around about what to do. In Busan, there is a jimjilbang that is supposedly the biggest in all of Asia. I've been wanting to go for a while since I have no qualms about being naked, but since the spa closes pretty late, we decided to do it later in the evening. We considered taking a boat tour, so we walked over to the pier in which the boats departed, but several people didn't want to do it because of price, weather and some other reasons that I don't remember. At least that killed some time. On our walk over to the pier, we discovered some trick art photographs so we had a fun, impromptu photo op. Because Daniel was leaving Busan early, we ended up sitting in a cafe

Look! The sun came out and we were able to tan.

drinking coffee until he had to leave for his train at 6:00 pm. After Daniel left, we went back to our Asian themed hostel and packed our bags for our adventure at Spa Land. The spa was definitely the best that I've been to since I've been here in Korea. They had outdoor foot baths, beds disguised as lounge chairs, all types of different saunas and an outdoor bathing area (only for the women.) BUT NO RAMEN! We were all starving by the time we got to Spa Land, so we decided to go eat some ramen since it's Korea and of course they'd have ramen. How dare they not have any!? It was so un-Korean that I was actually offended. Anyway, the spa was really fun. We went into the hottest sauna in the whole spa (94 degrees Celsius) willingly. Apparently there was a contest to see how long we could stay in there, but since I was starting to feel dizzy, I figured that it wouldn't be in my best interest to pass out in a freaking hot sauna. Plus, I was also being considerate to Mark since he wouldn't have to drag my unconscious body out of the sauna. I, predictably, don't have any pictures of the sauna because I consider walking around naked with a camera around my wrist to be bad manners. I'm sure it would be okay to take pictures in the saunas, but I get so ridiculously sweaty my camera would most definitely drown in my sweat. After the sauna we ate a lot of chicken then went back to the hostel since we had to wake up early the next morning for shark diving!

Mark and I at Haeundae Beach in Busan.

I was having a moment with my Winnie the Pooh towel.



Photo op outside of the lock.

Shark diving really isn't as dangerous as it sounds. If you aren't certified, they give you a three hour class on what exactly shark diving is, then before you're about to dive with the sharks, they go over the basics of diving like where your respirator is, what to do if the respirator falls out of your mouth, how to get water out of your mask while underwater, and something else that I can't remember. I was a good student though, I promsie! He also taught us a bunch of hand signals so we could communicate underwater. Those took me a while to respond to. When he'd flash the "OK" sign at me, I'd usually just stare at him blankly or give him a thumbs up, which means "go to the surface." That definitely wasn't the right response, but after a few more failures, I eventually got the hang of it. It was just weird.



Mark attempting to shove his massive bag in the locker.

This might sound surprising, but I actually wasn't nervous to dive with sharks. I was more nervous about the whole breathing underwater thing, or rather, not breathing underwater and dying. It takes a lot of faith to rely on a tank to give you air while you're in an area with no air. After our information session with our hilarious instructor, we had about three hours to kill until we had to be back for our dive. We decided to go eat at Papa John's, which was delicious as always, then we walked around the aquarium where I stared at the otters for a significant amount of time. I'm serious when I say that if I could have one as a pet, I would. I. Love. Otters. They are the most fantastic creatures to walk, or scurry, the Earth.

We were with Grey Nurse sharks and Black Tip Reef sharks

Once we all convened by the lockers, our instructor gave us all wet suits, booties and a vest thingy. I lived in California and was perfectly used to a wet suit and everything, but oh my gosh, I could not get the stupid thing on. Michael, our instructor, said that it's easier to get the wet suit on when it's wet. From what I remembered from my days in the Pacific, I thought it was more difficult to put on a wet suit when it's wet, but it had been so long since I had actually put one on, I decided to go ahead and trust the man. Perhaps I shouldn't have trusted him because it took Amy, Jessica and I a really long time to put our gear on. Mark of course, just slid his on, so he ended up waiting for us for about half an hour. We actually had to help each other because we were so helpless. I ended up getting blisters on my fingers from trying to pull on my wet suit, and considering both blisters were open, I was a little nervous about putting them in a tank full of sharks. There wasn't any blood though, so I was in the clear.



In the lock, getting ready to go into the tank.

Once we got everything on, we got tanks and weights for our waists so we could walk comfortably around on the tank floor. The tanks were so incredibly heavy that once he let go of the tank, I almost fell backwards. Mark had his on already, so I hobbled over to where he was standing and watched our instructor put the tanks on Jessica and Amy's back. Okay, so I know I'm a big, strong gal, but big, strong gals also like to be helped once in a while. Did our instructor think so? Not a chance. He told Mark to help Amy and Jessica by holding the tank backpacks underneath to relieve some of the weight on them, but left me to fend for myself. Was I peeved? A little bit. Since I'm not one to keep my mouth shut, I did "jokingly" complain, but then I basically accepted that I wasn't going to get any help when there were smaller girls present. Is that a stupid thing to get irritated about? Probably, but I really can't help it. Okay. Rant's over.



The Grouper: the most fearsome specimen in the tank.

We all made our way slowly to the lock, which is an area that's sectioned off from the main tank and is used to keep animals separated from the bigger fish. Mark was completely fine since he apparently has to carry backpacks that are much heavier than our measely tanks and waist weights. In the lock were several little sharks that weren't big enough to hang out with the big fish yet. So we learned all our basics in the tank and I'm proud to say that I passed with flying colors. It was definitely weird to breath through the respirator (I really don't even know if that's the correct term). At first I felt like I wasn't getting enough air and I really just couldn't get used to it. This brought back my fear of being under 15 feet of water and panicking because I couldn't breath. I did finally adapt to it, however, but Amy kept having problems because she felt like she wasn't getting enough air. We were instructed not to wave our hands around once we were in the tank because the big stupid grouper have been known to chomp on people's arms. They don't eat them or bite them, but you'll have a grouper on your arm until he decides that you aren't a fit meal. If a grouper decided to eat our arm, we were also instructed not to try to pull our arm out since the grouper's teeth slant inward and pulling our arm out would result in a whole lot of teeth going into our arm. The animals in the tank were, as a whole, pretty docile, except for the turtles, which they took out of the tank to avoid any injuries. Don't worry, they didn't throw us into the water with Hammerheads and Great White sharks. We were with the most docile sharks that couldn't care less that there were delicious, fleshy humans present.
To get into the tank, you have to rappel yourself down from a fiber glass tunnel, which is a tunnel that the people in the aquarium can walk through and see everything. So we made our way over to stand on top of the tunnel. Once we were lined up in order, he made us get down on our knees so we would be at lower risk of falling off the tunnel. When I went to get on my knees, something was unbalanced on my pack because I kept floating up to the left. I almost freaked out because I was terrified I was going to fall off the tunnel, but the instructor adjusted a strap and then I was able to sit on my knees without anymore incidents.

Not my best angle, but this is me rappelling.

Mark went down first, then me, Amy and finally, Jessica. Rappelling down wasn't hard at all. I had to remember to keep popping my ears on my way down which I can do very easily by almost yawning. I didn't have to plug my nose to pop my ears, so my journey into the tank went off without a hitch. As soon as I got into the tank, a shark swam RIGHT over my head. I even ducked because he would have slapped me with his fin. I can't express how cool that was. Mark and I were pretty low maintenance in the tank, so the instructor paid much more attention to Amy and Jessica because he knew that Amy was having issues with breathing and staying balanced. So Mark and I basically followed the three of them around while we were checking out everything in the tank. The instructor really liked our group (we were pretty awesome) so he spent some time finding us a lot of shark teeth to take home for souvenirs. We rented an underwater camera, so we were able to take some pretty fantastic pictures. The camera died however, so we weren't able to get that many, and since our instructor loved us, he gave us a full refund for the camera.

Trying to maintain my Korean-ness while underwater.

Mark looks like he's going to murder that fish.

Because my friends are awesome, Nadia and Lee Ann took a lot of pictures while we were in the tank. Nadia also made a video, which turned out to be pretty incredible. Enjoy!