Scuba Diving is… Worth a Shark Encounter?
Scuba diving is awesome, but I like wearing my Shark Scuba T-Shirt to acknowledge to the non-scuba world that yes, sometimes even scuba diving sucks. Most of the landlubbers who haven’t even tried scuba diving yet cite shark encounters as a very good reason to find other adventures to ford. It’s really quite a good argument, but life is too short to live in fear, even if the fear is of shark bites.
How common are shark bites, anyway?
Shark attacks on humans are extremely rare, whether the human is scuba diving or not. Only about 5 people per year die from shark attacks worldwide. The total number of shark attacks that occur each year worldwide is 65, on average. Statistics show that a toaster kills more people annually than sharks. So, if you encounter a shark while scuba diving, it’s good to keep these statistics in mind.
What makes scuba diving worth the risk?
The good thing is that even though life can literally turn to crap while wearing a scuba suit upon the occasion of a shark sighting, scuba diving offers the following awesome perks and experiences:
- As a scuba diver, you learn to master your buoyancy. When buoyancy is neutral, it’s as though you’re experiencing zero gravity – like an astronaut! So diving is very comparable to being in space! Perhaps divers should be referred to as scuba-nauts.
- As a scuba diver, you wear the needed equipment to breathe under the water. You’re literally going around in a foreign atmosphere and breathing with the fishes. You would have to have lost all of your childlike enthusiasm not to think that’s totally cool.
- You can get close to a huge variety of fish and other sea creatures. You may even have the thrill - or temporary horror - of seeing a shark swim by. You can spend many hours exploring coral and incredible marine life, an experience that can’t be duplicated on land.
- There is a peaceful serenity underwater that is completely different from being up top. The utter silence gives you a chance to shut out every kind of noise and think more clearly. It’s definitely therapeutic, unless you have too close an encounter with a shark or an electric eel, that is.
Get the t-shirt
Let everyone know you brave the ocean waters, in spite of such threats as the possibility of shark bites, oxygen toxicity, malfunctioning equipment, and getting a pulmonary embolism from ascending too rapidly, such as if you are chased by a shark. Get your Shark Scuba T-shirt today.
