Our descent to the bottom of the ocean coincided with the setting of the sun. By the time we were halfway down, an oily darkness had seeped through the depths. We turned our torches on and watched the beams disappear into the liquid void, like searchlights in a night sky.
Somewhere below a pack of grey nurse sharks cruised in and out of Foggy Cave, a well-known haunt off the Central Coast of NSW. The sharks appear at Foggy around Easter and stay for two to three months each year, though the reason remains a mystery.
Similarly, the cause of an alarming reduction in numbers right along the East Coast is not fully understood, but fishing and beach meshing are known to be partly responsible. Now listed as critically endangered, the grey nurse became the first protected shark in the world when the NSW Government passed legislation in 1984.
Since then the species has been listed as threatened under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and has been further protected by a Code of Conduct that restricts scuba diving at about a dozen NSW habitats regarded as critical to the species' survival.
The omission of Foggy Cave from the list of critical habitats sparked some controversy in the diving community, as has the ban on night dives at these sites, including Magic Point off Maroubra in Sydney. While commercial dive companies respect the ban in practice, some question if it has any benefit.
Divers remain, however, the grey nurse's greatest ally. Having witnessed the population's decline first-hand, they now provide valuable information for research aimed at helping the species recover.
As recently as the 1980s, the grey nurse was feared as a man-eater, mainly due to its fiercely fanged appearance. But of the 548 shark attacks recorded in Australia, including 182 fatalities, only four attacks have been attributed to the species. In each case the diver attacked had been feeding the grey nurse responsible. (image) The objective of the dive was to observe the shark's transformation from docile daylight drifter into nocturnal killing machine. (image)
With this in mind on our dark descent, we were not about to feed the pack at Foggy Cave - at least we hoped we weren't! The objective of the dive was to observe the shark's transformation from docile daylight drifter into nocturnal killing machine.
Foggy is a typical grey nurse haunt - a cluster of rocky caves and gutters surrounded by a sandy bottom. About 30m below the surface, we landed on our target. I paused atop a large boulder, shooting my torch into the eerie black all around.
The slow, rasping sound of my breathing was amplified by senses on high alert, but the same senses failed to notice the disappearance of my buddy, (the dive partner I'd been paired with before entering the water). For a moment I felt utterly alone - everyone else had dropped over the edge of the rocky cluster, beginning their search for Carcharias taurus.
I became acutely aware of my little beam of light, fading murkily into about two per cent of the surrounding darkness. Slowly, I turned in circles - chasing the unknown behind me - until I spied another lone diver out on a sandbank away from the rocks. I watched fascinated as the diver's torch lit the head of a large grey nurse cruising less than two metres away. (image) (image)
I watched fascinated as the diver's torch lit the head of a large grey nurse cruising less than two metres away. The diver fixed his torch on the head, illuminating a dentist's nightmare of erratically protruding fangs, before letting the beam slide down the body to the sleek tail, an exercise that seemed to take forever.
A second later another light caught my eye and, relieved to find some company, I dropped over the edge and joined two other divers at the mouth of a cave. Inside, another large shark patrolled up and down, icy eyes staring blankly back at us. The eyes were devoid of emotion, attached to a creature that simply kills to eat, eats to kill.
We watched engrossed while the shark swam mechanically back and forth. Seconds warped into minutes and suddenly it was time to go. We ascended below our bubbles while the pack moved out to hunt - fish, squid and crustaceans - as grey nurses have for millions of years.
It is still possible to dive with grey nurse sharks in NSW and the experience is almost certain to convince even sceptics that sharks can indeed be "beautiful". And you don't have to test one of the golden rules of avoiding a shark attack - never swim at night - to see for yourself. But if you are willing to tempt a close brush with those famous fangs, the following code of conduct should be observed.
Divers visiting grey nurse sites must not:
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