Would you swim in a shark tank?
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2003
1
27
Trip End
Ongoing
Busan, Korea Rep.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Surprisingly, the answers are yes and no respectively. We decided for our 9 day summer vacation to venture down to the southern part of Korea to relax. We decided to check out this shark dive in Busan, stay there for a few days, then hop over to Jeju Island to go camping by the beach. We took the KTX bullet train from Seoul to Busan after work on Friday evening and 3 hours later we were sitting on the beach having a beer at Haeundae Beach. Amazingly enough the beach was literally packed with university students well into the early morning. It was great seeing a little more laid-back side of Korea, up in Seoul, it's often all to easy to assume that everywhere is as hustle/bustle at the capital region.
Actually, Busan is no small city itself. It has a population of over 3 million and is the second largest city in South Korea. Historically, it was the only part of the mainland not captured by the communists during the Korean war, and is home to the U.N. cemetary/memorial to the foreign soldiers that died defending the south over 50 years ago. I took an afternoon to go down to the cemetery out of respect, and was presently surprised to find that the Canadian part of the memorial was outstandingly well done.
On the day of our dive, me and Stacey strolled around the packed aquarium waiting for our group to go into the tank. There was a little viewing area packed with Korean visitors watching with amazement as the sharks were being fed by divers at noon. Walking around the tank it was clear that these sharks were the real thing. There were 6 fully grown Tiger sharks, several lemon sharks, a leopard shark (whom Stacey nicknamed "Leppy",) as well as giant groupers, sea turtles, and smaller fish. The Tiger sharks looked the scariest with their crooked teeth jutting out of their powerful jaws.
When it was our turn to get suited up, Michael our dive master assured us that he had taken about 500 divers through the tank and hadn't lost anyone yet. It was surreal going under water, climbing down the acrylic walls of the tank while a crowd of Asian spectators stared in amazement just feet from you. For all the staring that we get on the streets just for being foreigners, it was quietly satisfying to stare back for a change. This time I was the zoo animal! People were tapping on the glass, pointing, gasping, and waving at us... or was it the massive shark swimming up behind me as I gawked back.
The sharks were actually nothing to be intimidated by. They swam right up to us, but were obviously uninterested in us having been fed already before we went in. It was amazing to get so close to an animal so feared in our culture, to realize that there was a mutual respect there, even a shared curiosity. I think we all came away from the experience both exhilarated and enlightened about sharks. It was an experience I'll never forget and would repeat in a moment.
