Breathing through my snorkel, I looked over at the divers, armed with their pvc pipes in case the oncoming hammerhead sharks got a little too close. Swimming with sharks was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced. In modern day media, sharks are portrayed as violent creatures who attack at the first sign of blood. They will hit, bite, and break into cages to get at the people inside. When I was in the cage, I found this to be quite the opposite. The only time I felt even the slightest bit nervous was when I had first gotten in the cage, afterwards all I could feel was amazement. Now I could be wrong, and it could be because these sharks are more used to people, but they seemed to actively stay away from the cage. There were multiple instances where I could have reached out and touched a shark fin, but whenever they came close to the cage, they would turn to avoid hitting it. As for the common misconception that they become extremely violent at the first drop of blood, I had an open wound on my hand and not a single shark paid us any mind.
The entire trip was filled with excitement. To start off the trip, we almost missed our flight because I wanted pizza at 4am. When we arrived on the island of Bimini, we immediately saw sharks. Bimini is an island in the Bahamas about a 40 minute flight off of Florida. When you looked off the dock there were 4-5 bull sharks there every morning. Throughout the week I spent in Bimini we interacted with these sharks, feeding them and even hopping in with them, while in a cage of course. There was actually only a 5 minute safety briefing on how to handle each shark that showed up.
On this trip I swam with a total of six species of sharks, and by far the most terrifying to be in the water with was the reef shark. Reef sharks are the exact thing you think of when you think of sharks. Anytime you see a drawing or figurine of a generic shark and that's what a reef shark looks like. There were three key reasons why these sharks were so scary for me to swim with: (1) the sheer amount of them, at any given moment you could look around and see six swimming nearby; (2) their curiosity, we were told by our guide they like to play this game of chicken, they will swim at you and you have to stare at them for them to go away; (3) that they like to isolate people, they'll circle and keep you away from the group so they can play this game.
This was such an amazing trip to go on, it's impossible for me to put it all into words. I met so many amazing people and made plenty of new friends. If you ever get the chance to step outside your comfort zone and go on a trip like this I highly recommend it. One thing learned from this trip was just how different the world outside of Croton is. Bimini might noy be full of the luxuries of Westchester County but everything there was so full of color that it made you forget where you were.