Bahamas 2026 – Freeport- The day I kissed a shark
On January 2nd, 2025, while I was sitting in Gansbaai, waiting to do cage diving and hoping to see a Great White, one of my travel mate for that day asked me which was the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I thought about a little bit and then I decided that it was the shark-baited dive I had In Umkomaas the year before, with the sharks swimming among us.
Should I be asked the same question, the updated reply would still involve sharks, but in this case it would sound:
“To kiss a shark”.
That’s the final aim for my second and last day of the shark interactive course with Cristina Zenato.
The first day was about getting familiar with the sharks and the sharks getting familiar with me.
On the second day, we’ll try to see if any of them accepts to sit in my lap and if it happens I can try to kiss him or her.
So, we go down again and this time the procedure is slightly different.
Cristina would be more distant and I would keep the tube with the fish. The aim is that the sharks interact more with me. She invites me to relax – I understand she finds my posture a bit rigid – and explains how do I need to act when a shark bumps into my belly.
I move slowly my torso to intercept the shark, and once she is my lap I go slowly down on my knees and I pet her head. If I want to lean and kiss the shark, I don’t put my hand on her, I can grab Cristina’s hand and I remove the regulator with the bubble ups, while I kiss her.
That’s the theory. It’s application is less easier than one could think of. The problem is not getting the shark into your lap, it’s maintaining her there while you are going down. I can have them bumping into my lap, but as soon as I go down, they swim away. I’m not sure what I should do to make them feel more comfortable with me.
During the surface interval, Cristina tells me that my technique reminds more of a ballet plié and we laugh together at this. As the tube bothers me a bit, we agree that she will handle it and then we go down for the fourth and last dive.
And that’s where it “almost” happens. Crook wants to stay with Cristina, she gets her in her lap and slowly sits on her knees, with Crook not moving by a centimeter. She invites me to go down as closes as possible to her. I do so. I get my knees down and after a few second I realize my knee is on the leften pectoral fin of the shark.
“Oops, sorry, Crook, I didn’t do it on purpose”.
I rub her head gently, with the point of my fingers and I guess that if my hearing would be tuned on sharks frequency, I might hear her purring. It looks like she likes the touch of my hand on her head. I look at Cristina and she points at her regulator. It measures I can try to kiss the shark. So, I breath in, I remove the reg making sure it’s facing up, I grab with my leften hand Cristinas arm not to fall down on the shark and I kiss her on her head. Smack smack smack, three kisses on Crooks head. Cristina invites me to do it again with no rush, I can linger a little longer, so I redo it and this time I try to be as aware as I can of the contact of my lips on the shark skin, because it’s the last dive and only God knows if this will happen again and when.
Once Crook decides her break is over, she leaves and we stand up again.
At a certain point, I hear Cristina screaming and pointing somewhere: she’s moving the tube in the water. She is trying to attract a big shark that has just arrived. That poor lady has an enormous hook in her mouth, to which another hook is attached, and a third one on one fin. It’s heartbreaking to witness all the scene: the shark with her flesh pierced and the sorrow of Cristina that wants to bring relief, but cannot because the shark does not want to come nearer.
For a while that’s the only thing we do, watching that shark – quite big, bigger than the other – and praying that she would come closer, but she doesn’t and after a while swims away.
To brighten the last moments of the dive, a nurse shark deigns to show up. Cristina had alerted me that it might happen and that his behavior would be totally different than the one of the Caribbean reef sharks. And in fact, as she had explained, the nurse shark targets the tube directly and doing so, he rubs over me overall. And it’s amazing to see how different is the feeling when you touch him. You can really feel the difference of the texture of their skin even with gloves and chainmail.
We have exceeded the 45 minutes of dive by a some minutes and it is time to go now.
“Dear Sharks, thanks for having me with you, thanks for welcoming me. It was amazing to spend time with you and I hope we’ll meet again”.
I say goodbye, and keep on looking at them while going back to the boat, with a last glance at the nurse shark before I pull my head out of the water.
There are no words that can describe how I feel, but as I look at Cristina and realize she’s waiting for my feedback, I manage to whisper that was the most beautiful thing I have ever done in my life.
And I want to do that again.
Just to clarify, I performed all those actions with a special group of sharks, that is used to interact with humans, and under the surveillance of a super expert instructor.
I would not, nor encourage anybody to do it in an different framework and environment, without the assistance of an expert.
