The Tale of the Shark Curse: Scuba Diving in Thailand

Throughout all of these blog posts of all the adventures Nolan and I have been on and all of the fun things we like to do around Thailand, there has been one part of my life that has been missing, and I think it's time you all found out about it. Scuba Diving has become one of my favorite hobbies that I ever had, and I couldn’t imagine my time spent in Southeast Asia without it. But, I do think I am getting ahead of myself.

We need to rewind the clock a long time. Back in July of last year, I met a fellow teacher and one of the newest residents of Phuket, Emily. Emily also works at the same school as Nolan and I, and we would hang out with a few other teachers on the weekends. On one of these casual nights, she told me that her sister was coming to visit her in December and desperately wanted to go diving while here. Emily wanted to go diving with her, but didn’t have her certification. At the time, I hadn’t really considered getting my certification. I remember as a kid my Dad would tell me stories about all the times he had gone scuba diving, and once Emily brought it up, I was immediately interested. However, on top of being interested in diving, I knew that this sport was a huge endeavor; it would take a lot of time and cost a good amount of money. I was really unsure if I would have the time, but Nolan, being the amazing fiance that he is, knew that I couldn’t pass up on this opportunity, and he pushed me to sign up with Emily. A few days later, I told Emily that I was in. She found a dive shop called Aussie Divers that did Open Water Certifications and was only a ten minute walk from our apartment, so she signed us up.

In case you are unfamiliar, the course begins with a day of sitting on a couch, surrounded by whale shark and fish stuffed animals, watching movies about scuba diving, and taking quizzes and a final exam to prepare you for everything you need to know before starting. She set the date for November 1st at 8 am. I was like, sure! Sounds like a good enough day for this, right? Shouldn’t be too hard!

Well, we were deeply wrong. Why, you ask? Well let me tell you. Do you know the day before November 1st? October 31st. Otherwise known as HALLOWEEN. ON A SATURDAY. Suffice it to say, we did not sleep much, or well, and I can confidently say that I felt worse that day than any other day of all of the time that I spent in Thailand. I will spare you the details. It wasn’t pretty.

As we walked out of our 6 hours of scuba diving lessons, feeling like death warmed up a little, Emily assured me that it would only get better from here. Thank God, she couldn’t have been more right.

The following Sunday we showed up bright and early at the dive shop, ready to spend our day actually scuba diving. Well, it was in a swimming pool, but still! We would be breathing underwater, and I couldn’t wait. We got about another hour of training with all of our actual equipment, and then jumped in the pool to show off our swimming skills. We needed to be able to swim 10 lengths of the pool without stopping, and tread water for 10 minutes. I think this would be a good part of the story to mention that scuba diving definitely isn’t for everyone. It can be very physically demanding, but more than that, it can be a very scary and stressful experience for people. In our class, we learned that many divers panic upon putting their head underwater and trying to breathe from their regulator. For this exact reason, Nolan never had any interest in diving. And that's totally okay, as it is much too expensive of a hobby to be doing it without an absolute passion. That being said, I was a little bit worried that Emily or I would have problems with the swimming skills, or panic as we learned how to put our heads under and breathe. It was kind of the moment of truth, would we both be able to do this, or not?

After that pool day we left knowing three things for certain. One, we should have worn sunblock as we left that day with some of the worst sunburns we’ve had in Thailand. Two, we both loved scuba diving. And three, we were both so happy to have started this journey together. After the horrid day of sitting on a couch, and the amazing day of diving in the pool, we learned just how important it is to have a dive buddy that you trust. Your buddy is your life line underwater. Each diver is obviously equipped with their own air tank and regulator, but every diver also has a second regulator for any emergency situations underwater. Emily and I had to learn to stay close together, so if either of us ever had problems with our equipment, we could use each other's second regulator to safely swim to the surface. On top of this lifeline, having a buddy is also incredibly important for helping to get geared up, checking over each other's gear to make sure everything looks good before the dive, checking with each other on how much air you have left while you are diving, and making sure that no one gets lost. At this point, Emily and I were in it together, fullstop.

A few weeks later, it was finally time to do some real diving. We had another early morning walk to the dive shop, unsure as to what exactly we would be doing. When we got there, we asked where we would be diving that day, thinking, maybe we’ll just jump off the pier or something? We were pleasantly surprised to find out that, no, we would not be diving right around Phuket, we would actually be on a boat for about three hours that would take us to the Phi Phi Islands, some of the most beautiful islands in all of Thailand. We were ecstatic. Both of us had heard so much about Phi Phi, and although we wouldn’t actually set foot on the islands, we couldn’t wait to see what we had heard so much about. We walked out to the dock with our two guides for the day, Ash and Richard. Ash was one of the main dive instructors for Aussie Divers and Richard was doing a much more advanced course, the Dive Master certification. They both helped us as we learned so much more about diving that day.

As we sailed to Phi Phi, delicious catered breakfasts set out in front of us, they started to describe the process of diving off a boat. We were going to move slowly, and just make sure we were all doing good and feeling calm before really moving around too much. But, towards the end of the debrief, they let us know about some of the things we might see. Phi Phi is known for having the best coral reefs anywhere near to Phuket, and they told us all of the hand signals for the different fish we might see (you can’t exactly talk underwater). We learned about trigger fish and parrot fish and lionfish and stonefish. We practiced the signs for turtle, octopus, and most importantly, shark.

Phi Phi was known for having lots of black tip reef sharks, a very timid and nervous kind of shark that likes to hang out in shallow water. I was skeptical at first, thinking back to all of the Shark Weeks I had spent time watching as a kid, before the dive masters ensured me that the only problems we would have with the sharks is that we might not be able to see them, because they were so scared of people that they would quickly swim away. Emily, on the other hand, had no worries about the sharks. She was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum; Emily desperately wanted to see a shark. It was one of her main motivators for diving from the start. Then, I knew that if I was going to be a diver, I had to start getting excited about sharks. This is when I asked one of the more naive questions of my life, will we be able to see a whale shark? Ash and Richard chuckled a little bit, before letting me know that seeing whale sharks was actually really rare, that they only hung out at Phi Phi occasionally, and that if we really wanted to see a whale shark, we would probably have to go to a different set of islands very far away. I laughed off my naivete as we pulled up to Phi Phi and started gearing up.

Now this part of the dive experience was probably the most stress that Emily and I had ever felt while diving. When we had learned about our gear at the pool, we had done everything slowly with lots of space. Here on this dive boat, that was not the case. There were probably about 50 divers on that boat. There were people everywhere, walking with their gigantic tanks, huge flippers, and absolutely no peripheral vision because of their goggles. We were in Group 2, so Group 1 geared up first and headed towards the very back of the boat. Then a huge beep went off that alerted the divers that they could jump. It felt like watching skydivers jumping off a plane as the divers held onto their goggles, regulators in place, took one big step off the back of the boat, and then descended down into the water. We were some of the last divers to jump because it was our first time. Emily and I each looked over each other's gear to make sure that everything looked right, or at least as close to what we could remember was right, and frantically looked in each other's eyes as we jumped into the water.

Ash had told us that we were going to swim away from the boat instead of just going down right away, and the waves at Phi Phi were massive that day. My heart was racing as I tried to swim over all of the waves, following Ash and trying not to lose Emily. Once we were a safe distance away from the boat, we signaled to each other that we were ready to go down. We let out the air in our BCDs (basically fancy scuba diving life jackets that kept all of your gear together), and we started scuba diving in the ocean for the first time. I was breathing a lot and breathing quickly, trying to calm down my nerves from the strenuous and hectic swim on the surface. I was immediately having trouble actually sinking into the water, as Richard signaled to me to make sure that I breathed out as much air in my lungs as I could (your lungs can hold a lot of air, and if you hold a lot of it in, they’re basically a giant balloon that will float you to the surface). I pushed myself to breath out, and started equalizing my ears as we descended into the water.

As I finally started to take slow, long breaths, a huge wave of calm came over me. Although the water was so choppy on the surface, down here, everything was quiet and serene. As I got my depth under control, I started to open my eyes to the reef and the fish all around me.

This became a feeling that I would crave and yearn for at any time that I am above the water. Even as I write this now, thinking about being down in a coral reef like that makes me giddy with excitement, and I wish I could put on my gear, hop into that water there in Phi Phi, and feel that sense of complete satisfaction and serenity.

When you are snorkeling, it feels like being in a plane above a city, looking down from far away, and imagining what it would be like to be down there. When you are scuba diving, you are flying through the action of the reef getting up close with all of the beautiful coral, and at times finding yourself surrounded by massive schools of fish. All of a sudden, I was a part of a vibrant, fast paced, almost alien ecosystem. It was one of the best feelings I had ever experienced.

On that first dive, one of the first things we saw was a cuttlefish. Before being prepped on the

dive boat, I had never even heard of a cuttlefish, but watching it down there, it became one of the most beautiful and unbelievable creatures I had ever seen. It looked like a ghost, but with an octopus as a face. It floated into the middle of our dive group, and hung out there for almost a full minute. It felt like it was greeting me into the underwater world.

After 45 minutes spent underwater, I came up absolutely beaming with joy. Although we didn’t see any sharks, we saw so many beautiful and fascinating sea creatures. Just existing down there was my favorite thing about that first dive. As we climbed out of the water and took off all our gear, we were told that lunch was served. We headed to the buffet that was filled with some of the most amazing Thai food we’ve had, and we realized that we were starving! Scuba diving can really burn some serious calories so we filled our plates and headed upstairs to the main deck

where we realized the boat had parked in front of Maya Bay for lunch, a world famous beach that was known for its appearance in the movie The Beach. I had never seen the movie, but it was a truly unbelievable view for lunch. We ate with our dive instructors, as we looked out at the view and talked about everything we had seen underwater. The dive instructors at Aussie Divers were great at teaching us about diving, but they were also just A+ hilarious people. With all of the time spent on the boat that day, we really got to know them, and more importantly, joked around and laughed with them. We went on two more dives around Phi Phi, and then headed back on the three hour journey to Phuket.

As Emily and I watched the sunset from the dive boat, eating the late afternoon snack of spring rolls and chicken nuggets, we realized that we had had one of our favorite days since being in Thailand. From the actual scuba diving to the food to the hilarious dive instructors, all without even a semblance of cell phone service, we couldn’t wait for our next dive day.

With one more dive day a few weeks later, we finished our Open Water certification. On this day, we went to Racha Island, where we saw lots more amazing ocean life, and saw our very first boat wreck. On that dive, as the boat headed back towards land, we talked with one of the other core instructors for Aussie Divers, Martin, who was usually in charge of teaching the Advanced Course. He told us all about the course, which is another 2 full days of diving, where we would learn how to dive deeper (down to 30 meters, almost 100 feet!), navigate underwater, dive around wrecks, and go on night dives. We knew we needed to do more scuba diving, so we told them we would be back in February to keep on learning.

By this time, Emily and I had made quite a name for ourselves within the Aussie Divers community. Most people who do the Open Water Course do the whole thing in four days while they are on vacation, but it took us three months! So, we were able to make quite a long lasting impression on them, especially because we were always up for some of their Australian banter. When we walked back into the dive shop in February, we opened the door to a course of, “Close the door, don’t let them in!!!” It was basically their version of an endearing love song. However, this time, we came with a friend. Brian, one of Nolan’s oldest and best friends from Santa Barbara came out to visit, and wanted to come do the advanced course with us. He was welcomed into the Aussie Divers family almost immediately, and we were graced with Martin as our instructor for the day. We were pleasantly surprised when we were told that we would be going back out to Phi Phi for another gorgeous day of diving. After doing the Open Water Course, we were much more confident in our skills. We would jump into the water with almost no nervousness at all, and we were all the more excited because Brian was with us.

However, on this trip, Emily had a bone to pick with the great big ocean. Throughout the entire open water course, and when she went diving in Phi Phi with her sister, she had never seen a black tip reef shark. Emily and I had also been snorkeling in Phi Phi. I saw one little shark dart by the reef, but Emily was still left sharkless. According to the dive instructors, black tip reef sharks were supposed to be abundant in this area. On our first dive, Ash said that we were going to jump in and be surrounded by them. On every dive at Phi Phi she had been on, many other divers on the boat had seen the sharks. Yet, she had never seen one.

So out to Phi Phi we went, desperately looking for sharks. Martin wrote out an entire game plan for how we would see them, and we were ready to jump from the second the horn on the boat went off, a huge change from the first time we stepped off that boat. We swam to where all of the sharks normally hang out, and looked towards the surface where the sharks like to swim around.

We looked around for a few minutes, and not a single shark made an appearance. Although we were a bit disappointed in the lack of sharks, I saw not only my first, but also my second and third turtles that day, we swam through some little cave pathways, and we got to have another amazing lunch with the view of Maya Bay. (When we got back to the dive shop, Martin told Ash that it was the first time IN MONTHS that he was unable to find a single shark. Emily was not happy.)

The next weekend, we were set to go back out on another dive day, this time fully expecting to head to Racha Island (a sharkless endeavor to be sure). Unfortunately, just a few days before the dive, Emily started to feel a little bit sick, and she ended up testing positive for COVID. Brian and I hadn’t seen her at all that week, and since Brian needed to finish his Advanced Course before he left, the two of us headed to the dive shop on our own.

When we got there, we received some very exciting news that we would be headed out to Phi Phi once again. This meant we had another chance to see the sharks. At this point, much to Emily’s dismay, we had started thinking that Emily had a bit of a curse. That girl, for the life of her, could not see a shark. She had The Shark Curse. When Brian and I found out we were going to Phi Phi, we didn’t want to jinx anything, but we did have a strong feeling that we would see some sharks that day.

On this day, we had Ash back as our trusty guide, and he made yet another game plan to show us some sharks. We jumped in the water, and swam to the same area as we had with Martin, looking for the black tip reef sharks. Ash told us to look out for gray moving rocks, and stay as close to him as we could, because when the sharks saw Ash, they were more than likely going to swim away as fast as they could. I was swimming right on Ash’s fins, looking up to the surface when he started pointing. A small shark, probably only 3 or 4 feet long, darted through the shallows. I couldn’t believe it, and as quick as I saw it, it swam away. Then, Ash pointed again, and again, and again. Sharks were darting out everywhere, all of them from 3 to 5 feet long and never any closer than about 10 feet away. They were more shallow than us, more deep than us, truly all around. Brian and I looked at each other and couldn’t help but laugh at the joy of it all. When we got back on the boat that day, I asked Ash how many he counted, and he said it was probably about 15 sharks (Emily, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I know I said it was only 4).

We finished our Advanced Course that day, and I knew I couldn’t be done diving, no matter how much money and time I was spending on the hobby. And, I knew that Emily needed to see a shark.

But, no matter how much fun it was to look for the black tip reef sharks up in the shallows, there was always a bigger goal in mind. Emily and I needed to see a whale shark. After we started diving, Emily had even purchased a whale shark phone case. Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the whole ocean, and although they can be elusive, they are definitely not impossible to find. Although they do sometimes frequent Phi Phi, we had heard from everyone who we were diving with, that if we wanted to see a whale shark, we needed to go to the Similans.

The Similan Islands are a large group of islands to the North East of Phuket. They were known for having the best diving in all of Thailand, but they were very far off the mainland, too far for a day trip of diving. So, Emily and I started talking about going on a liveaboard dive boat to the Similians. A liveaboard is basically every divers dream. You board a boat with lots of other divers, and you just eat, sleep, dive, and repeat. Our Spring Break was coming up and even though we had talked about doing a big trip to Bangkok with some of our friends, Emily and I knew that this would be a once in a lifetime experience, and we couldn’t pass it up.

On the night of our last day of school before Spring Break, Emily and I hopped in a taxi that took us about two hours North of Phuket. The dive boat would be leaving from Khao Lok bright and early, so we needed to get up there to try on all of our gear and be there so we could leave with the boat the next day. When we got there, we actually found out that the dive boat was already cruising through the Similans. The island chain is so long that it actually takes 8 days to do the whole thing. Emily and I could only do a four day trip, so the next morning we got on a speedboat full of snorkelers that would deliver us to our dive boat. After a bumpy hour and a half speed boat ride we arrived at one of the islands, appropriately named Stonehenge because of the gigantic boulders that piled on top of each other, and we were surrounded by the brightest turquoise water we had ever seen. When we pulled up, the snorkelers started jumping off the boat, and we just looked around kind of unsure as to what to do next. We had our backpacks full of our belongings and somehow needed to get onto a much bigger boat.

After a few minutes of standing around, unsure as to what to do, the lady who had helped us onto the speedboat came up to us and told us our dinghy was here. At that point, we were just like, well ok! We strapped on our backpacks and headed out to the end of the speed boat where we jumped onto the dinghy, and rode over to our home for the next four days.

The Bavaria (a German run dive boat) was three stories high, and about the size of a small yacht. The first level towards the back was the dive platform, and the rest of the deck was full of cabin rooms. The second level had a big dining area that we also used for dive briefings, a small lounge with games and couches, and a few more rooms, including Emily and I’s. The top deck was appropriately named the sundeck. It had a few loungers that were mostly shaded and then if you wanted to burn or die of heatstroke you could sit on the front or the back in the sun. We were greeted by one of the dive instructors and we were directed to put our stuff in our rooms and get ready for the first dive. Our room was quite literally just a set of bunk beds, and a small shelf. It was the tiniest room I’ve probably ever slept in, but that didn’t really matter because the entire boat was basically just one big communal living space. We quickly dropped our stuff off in our room and changed into our swimsuits. We headed back out to the tables where we were given a very quick dive briefing before jumping into the water, only about 15 minutes after we had arrived on the boat from the dinghy.

And, once again, I was washed over by an overwhelming sense of calmness and joy. The dive was beautiful, with some of the biggest trigger fish I’ve ever seen, as well as a few small rays and gorgeous coral reefs. This dive was also important to show the dive instructors our capabilities as divers, and not to toot our own horns, but Emily and I passed with flying colors. We hopped out of the water and headed up to the dining area to grab some lunch.

As we sat down for lunch after such a breathtaking dive, it really felt like dipping our toes into something that was too good. It felt like, after doing this for four days, we wouldn’t ever want to do anything else ever again. We knew, immediately, that this would be one of the best things we ever did.

Our schedule each day looked a little something like this:

6:30 am: Wake up call. They would walk around the deck with a little bell and Emily and I would rise from our bunks, open the door, and look out to the rising sun.

7:00 am: First dive.

8:30 am: Breakfast.

10:00 am: Second dive.

12:00 pm: Lunch

2:00 pm: Third dive.

3:30 pm: Snack

5:00 pm or 6:00 pm: Dusk dive or night dive.

6:30 pm or 7:30 pm: Dinner.

Repeat (for four days. I wish it was for forever).

When Emily and I embarked on this dive trip, we had one goal in mind: see a whale shark. We also had a secondary goal: see a manta ray. These are two of the biggest animals in the ocean, and we were hoping for this big dive trip to see some big fish. And, although we did spend some time looking out into the big blue open waters, our attention soon shifted to the smaller creatures of the ocean. We were diving the best dive sites in Thailand, multiple times per day, and we learned how interesting and exciting it was to look for little tiny fish or seahorse. After just a few dives, Emily and I found our new favorite fish: the cubed box fish. This little guy is so tiny, only 2 to 4 inches long. It has a little snout, almost like a seahorse, and is usually bright yellow with little black spots. These little fish would usually stay put on their little spot on the reef, so if you went back and forth along the reef, it became a fun game to try and find the same one twice.

The other creature that we started learning a lot more about was the sea sponge. There are so

many different varieties of sea sponges. Some of them are super common, but there are a few that are super rare. We started keeping our eyes out for these more rare kinds of sea sponge, and it became a very fun way to hone in on our perception skills. I know I was always super excited to find something rare and small, and watch as our whole dive group looked at it.

One of our most unique, and definitely most exciting dives, was our one night dive. Emily and I had never been on a night dive, and we were immediately very nervous. I mean, we would be down to 15 meters, about 60 feet, in the pitch black ocean. How could we not be scared? Of course, each diver was equipped with a flashlight so that we could actually see something on the dive. We geared up around 6:00 pm, jumping in the water just as the sun was beginning to set. For the first 15 minutes of the dive, we could still rely on the light of the sun, but after that, we needed our flashlights to see anything. And, believe it or not, as it got darker and darker, I actually got more excited. The night dive was especially interesting because this is when the big predator fish come

out to hunt. We were told to look out for Moray Eels and Barracuda, because they usually started to hunt right as the sun set. About 30 minutes into the dive, in the pitch black, a Barracuda swam out of nowhere to sit right in the middle of a group of about 10 divers. We all had our flashlights set on the Barracuda, as we knew it was on the hunt. Then, so suddenly, the Barracuda darted at a fish a few meters away, snapped it in his jaws, threw it a few feet above its head, chomped it again, and swam away! It was unbelievable! It all happened so fast that one of our favorite dive guides, Lavoy, actually screamed out of excitement, a sound that I had definitely never heard underwater.

The next day, after another gorgeous dive, we got out of the water and were taking off our gear when another dive group started boarding the boat. Immediately as they were stepping on to the boat, we heard a chorus of, “Did you see it?” “No, I didn’t, did you?” “Yeah, but it was super quick, it swam away.” Emily and I rushed back to the platform, totally getting in the way as they were trying to get their gear off, and asked what they had seen. Three out of the five divers in their group had seen a whale shark. They said it was out in the distance, and it swam away really quickly, but it was there. Emily and I started freaking out, wanting immediately to hop back into the water with fresh tanks and start looking. As more divers got on the boat and word spread, we begged the instructors to let us stay at that dive site to go looking for the whale shark again. They agreed, and two hours later we jumped back in with one goal in mind.

Almost immediately, we realized that the current was unbelievably strong, too strong to really do any diving without getting extremely tired from kicking against the current. For a while, we tried to hide behind boulders or in little rock formations to stay out of the current and look for the big big big fish, as our instructor Toom called the whale shark. At a certain point, it just became too hard to hide from the current, and every diver from our boat decided to hold on to the giant mooring line, the rope that was holding the boat to a big anchor tied into the ground. We all held onto the rope as hard as we could, as we looked out into the distance for the whale shark. We stayed that way for a full 15 minutes, and the whale shark never came back. Feeling a little defeated, we got out of the water, and grabbed some dinner, hoping that the whale shark might follow us along to our next dive in the morning.

The next morning, Emily and I awoke slightly to the distant sound of a bell, but it never came back around to our room, so we thought it couldn’t have been the wake up call. 30 minutes later we heard the bell again, this time right outside, and we hopped out of bed and started getting ready for the day. Just a few minutes later, we had a knock on our door, which was extremely unusual, and it was one of the dive instructors, asking us why we weren’t at the briefing. We were like, what? It's time for a briefing? Apparently, someone (Lavoy) had forgotten to come by our room for the wake up bell! So we ran out to briefing, threw on our dive gear, and hopped in the ocean, without the chance to brush our teeth or go to the bathroom. It was the best.

It was our final day, and we couldn’t believe how fun and serene the whole experience had been. With no cell phone signal and schedules full of diving and eating, we had both exited real life and had been living fully in this new universe where the only thing that was important was what you saw in the ocean that day. As we pulled back into Khao Lok, Emily and I agreed that it was one of the best vacations we had ever been on. We left the boat feeling so peaceful and content with the trip.

However, there was one problem. We had not seen a whale shark. It was disappointing but we were staying positive because of how amazing the rest of the experience had been. That was until Emily checked her Instagram for the first time in four days, and our good old friends at Aussie Divers, diving in Phi Phi, had seen a whale shark!!! We couldn’t believe it. Here we were, so far away from where we usually dive, looking for a whale shark, and one swam right up to Phi Phi. We tried not to dwell on it as we got some post dive trip Thai Massages to work out all the kinks we had gotten from swimming for four hours a day and carrying around all of the equipment.

The next day, as we headed to another island to meet up with Nolan and some other friends from Phuket, we got a message from one of our dive instructors on the liveaboard, letting us know that the boat we had just been on was back at a dive site we had just been to, and they saw a whale shark and a manta ray! At this point, it seemed like everyone around us was seeing whale sharks, and we felt seriously left out.

When we arrived back in Phuket just a few days later, Emily sent me yet another post from Aussie Divers showing yet another whale shark at Phi Phi. Throughout our time spent diving, we had learned that the perfect whale shark conditions include a lot of food, krill and tiny fish, and a cold water surge from the deep ocean, and if a dive site had consistent conditions, a whale shark could hang out there for weeks at a time. So, Emily and I thought, what if the whale shark is hanging out. What if we can go see it?

We walked into the Aussie Divers that night and asked for an honest opinion from one of the instructors, Darren. He told us that not one, but two whale sharks were swimming around Phi Phi, and there had been sightings from divers almost every day for a week. Although we were becoming broke from this addicting habit, we knew we couldn’t pass this up. We asked Darren if he could get us on a boat to Phi Phi, and he wasn’t sure, but told us he would call. The next morning, I got a call that we would be on a boat to Phi Phi the next day, and if we saw a whale shark, we would owe Darren our first born children. I said it was a deal.

When we arrived at the dive shop the next morning, we were more stressed than we had ever been. We had one goal for this dive trip, and knew we were setting ourselves up for massive disappointment if we didn’t see it. We made the three hour boat ride out there, and our first dive of the day was set for Koh Bida Nok, the dive site where the whale sharks had been seen. We started gearing up as we approached the dive site, and there were already 3 or 4 other boats there. As I stood on the platform, I looked over to the dive boat next to us, and one of the boat boys was signing: big shark. Big big big big shark. The whale shark was here.

Koh Bida Nok is a small island with an incredibly impressive reef (this was the dive site with all of those little black tip reef sharks). There was one big wall of the island that they called whale shark wall, because the whale sharks would swim in from the open water to feed on the small krill. Emily was terrified that her shark curse would remain, and that we wouldn’t see any sharks that day. We had to stay hopeful.

We jumped in and started swimming up and down the wall. If the situation had been any different, this would have been a terrible diving strategy. We were at the best dive site in Phi Phi, and we were just swimming up and down the wall barely even looking at the beautiful reef. We were just staring out at the open water. I kept an eye on my dive computer, knowing that this was a 45 minute dive. At 15 minutes, nothing. By 30 minutes, nothing. 35 minutes, nothing. We were all starting to get tired. It was so hard looking for the whale shark, because they are huge but they are quick, so if everyone in your dive group is looking at the reef for one minute, it could swim right by your back and you would completely miss it. On land, if a giant elephant is walking towards you, you would hear it. But in the water, the animals are completely silent. You have to be diligent. Look out, look right, look left, look down, look up. Over and over, I would squint out into the distance, wondering if I could just make it out, thinking that I would see it from so far away that I would have to look as hard as I could. Look left, nothing. Look up, nothing. Look right. There it was.

The beautiful, graceful, massive whale shark swimming out of the blue and turning towards us. I immediately couldn’t breathe. When diving, it is important to try to take long slow breaths to use your air as slowly as possible, but all of a sudden, I was panting. I only had one thought: Emily cannot miss this. I turned away from the big Big BIG BIG fish, and started swimming as quickly as I could to Emily, as she was looking at the reef. After a few seconds of panicked swimming, I grabbed her arm as hard as I could, something I NEVER do underwater. She knew immediately what was happening. We turned and swam out towards the whale shark. It turned towards us, and then as other divers got near to us, it kept on turning and slowly swam back out into the blue. Emily and I held hands as we watched it swim and go. By the time it swam away, we had only seen it for about 30 seconds, but it was the best 30 seconds of our diving career. It was so much more beautiful than I could have imagined. Its white spots freckling its blue back made it look like the sun was hitting it and causing it to sparkle. Its mouth was HUGE. Its tale pushed it through the water so gracefully. From what we heard from our dive instructor, this was actually a very young whale shark, only about 15 feet long. They can get up to twice that size. When the dive time ended, we swam up to the surface and immediately started celebrating. We did it! We finally saw the whale shark! We were filled with such pure and profound joy. It was one of my favorite moments of the entire year. And we had done it at our home dive site, our favorite dive site, and we had seen it together.

That night, we went to a small bar behind the dive shop with Martin and Nolan and we celebrated the great occasion. Emily had broken her shark curse with the biggest shark in the entire ocean.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, scuba diving was one of the best things that I did in Thailand, and definitely the greatest hobby I’ve had in my life thus far. Emily and I have had the chance to dive in clear blue, warm water, and study unbelievably beautiful coral reefs, on a regular basis. We have spent countless hours living, eating, and diving off of boats with gorgeous views and even better people. And we saw a whale shark.