Rob, a commercial diver from Nova Scotia, has joined me for a couple months of diving and hangin’ out. He’s seen just about everything we got around here. But today was a special day for him. He got to join four long-time local pros for a day of spearfishing and shark watching. Straight out from our shop we hovered right over the beginning of the wall of el Canti’l. El Cantil is the name of the trench between Cozumel and Playa del Carmen, mainland Mexico.

We suited up, did our final buddy checks and were off with a splash! We each plumetted down to the wall’s lip sitting in 100′ of water. Rob stayed next to Alberto, 25 year pro here, and I went a little deeper with Miguel, 12 year local pro. We hit 130′ and before I knew it, Miguel had shot a 17 kg. (35lbs) Mullet Snapper. We swam at that depth for a couple minutes. I look around behind me and sure enough there were 2 Bull sharks right behind us and catching up quick! We head up to find that both Alberto and his friend Antonio had speared fish and now had 3 bullsharks swimming within feet of them. Rob had no spear and was just observing everything going on around him. I had a camera and was clicking away like crazy (although no pics came out). I was more concerned with the multipying numbers of Bull sharks ranging from 8-12 foot! At my last count in sight there were 8. That’s just about enough I thought! If my mouth could have dropped open without me losing my reg, it would of hit the floor! And they weren’t shy about what they wanted….the spearfishermen’s catch.

At 15 feet, we all leveled off for our safety stop. All the while sharks were passing around us, behind, and coming up from out of the abyss to see what we had. And what we had were three Mexican spearfishermen (with fish) and one amazed and petrified Canadian and American. After a few minutes of just watching them go by we made our way up to the surface. It was actually peaceful seeing them move about with such grace and power. At no point did any of the sharks ever come close enough to take the fish from the spearfishermen. But they said it has happened…and I believe them!

We finally made it up to the surface and look down and all we saw was sharks passing under us and and getting closer! I looked around and …no boat. Uh what….that’s right…no B-O-A-T. Ok mister longtime professionals…what to do…well we planned to leg it back to shore. Luckily, it was only a couple hundred yards away. So off we go…heads down and swim keepin’ a close eye on the sharks below. At one point we were in only 15 foot of water and still had a 10 footer pass under us. A boat passed by saying he would go inform our captain of our location. The current had changed direction and we had ended up in a completely different place. It happens sometimes with changing currents, not often, but it does happen. However, we were prepared and all inflated our surface marking bouys to alert boats of our place in the water until our boat could collect us. After a few minutes, the Lil Kitty dive boat appeared….Thank God!

We readily threw our equipment into the boat after swimming a few minutes. In seconds, we were back to the beach for beer drinkin’ and tales at the bar of our great diving adventure. Boy, you should have seen their eyes when we told the size of the sharks we had just encountered. The size of saucers I tell ya!