Some people have a run of bad luck that defies rational explanation. When I was working in the diving industry I was asked to pay particular attention to one of the divers on our boat. She was a woman in her mid-twenties who had suffered a particularly traumatic experience at sea.
A few years earlier, she and her husband had been taking part in a yacht race round the Palm Islands, which are located at the inner edge of the Great Barrier Reef to the north of Townsville. They were negotiating a passage beside a whirlpool when the yacht hit a submerged rock and broke up. Her husband was thrown into the water and swam to safety. As he was clambering out, he saw debris from the yacht going round in circles. It moved to the middle of the whirlpool and was sucked under. He waited for his wife and the skipper but there was no sign of them.
Distress calls went out from other boats in the race and some of my diving mates were called upon to mount a rescue operation. Everyone knew that "rescue" was a term used when no one wanted to talk about retrieving dead bodies.
They reached the site of the accident and recognised it from previous visits. One of my friends had explored the whirlpool area and knew it well. He figured the missing people could have been washed into a cleft in the rock platform that ran beside the pool. He dived down and found bits or wreckage jammed in the base of the cleft but there was no sign of any bodies.
That night he couldn't sleep. The thought of failing to do a proper search weighed on his mind. There was an outside chance the missing people were alive and waiting to be found.
He returned to the scene of the accident at first light and made a determined effort to penetrate the debris. This time he broke through and found the two people trapped at the top of the cleft, just clear of the water. The skipper was dead but his female companion was still alive. He thrust his air supply into her mouth and took her to safety.
Not surprisingly, the young woman was deeply shocked by the ordeal. Her husband continued to dive and it was a long time before he managed to convince her that it was safe for her to go to sea again. When she went out with me it was her first diving trip since that fateful day.
The weather was fine and the sea was calm but murky when we reached the Great Barrier Reef. The skipper anchored well away from the reef for safety reasons. He took two buddy pairs across in a small rubber boat then returned and handed the boat over to me. I went out with the husband and wife and a novice diver for whom I was responsible as divemaster.
We checked that the boat was properly anchored and began our dive. After a couple of minutes my buddy began to show signs of anxiety. I wasn't surprised. There were sharks everywhere. In all my years of diving I'd never seen so many in the same place at the same time. And they weren't harmless reef sharks. They were bronze whalers and some were very big. Diving in murky water is not advised when sharks are around. There's a risk they might mistake you for a seal and take a bite. I decided to abort the dive and we returned to the rubber boat.
The other divers joined us, evidently spooked by the sharks. The young woman was particularly unnerved. The water was no more than waste deep and she stood beside the boat, struggling to undo a strap.
Without warning, a baby shark appeared and attacked her. The small creature was so slim it was almost snakelike. I grabbed its tail, whirled it over my head and hurled it away. Moments later the little shark was back, gnawing at the woman's leg. This time I wasn't taking any chances. I sliced off its head with my dive knife and dumped the pieces in the boat.
By now we were in a state of considerable apprehension. There were sharks all around us and they were agitated. As divemaster I had to remain calm and collected. I did my best. There was room in the boat for six people and there were eight of us. I called for a volunteer and we hung onto a rope at the rear while the woman's husband skippered the boat back. In my brightly coloured wetsuit, I felt like a lure on a fishing line.
If I'd had time to think I would have done things differently. Scuba tanks float. They could have been trailed behind the boat. There would then have been room for all of us on board.