DEEP SOUTH DIVERS Encourages a Friend

Dear Alex:
I’ve been meaning to sit down and write you back for the past month or so – I have been so busy diving; things have been crazy!

I wanted to write and tell you how much your card meant to me. It’s been sitting on my refrigerator since I got it, and everyone who comes over to my house sees it and thinks it’s the coolest card ever. When I tell them that my friend Alex made it for me and that you’re seven (maybe eight now?), they can’t believe it. You did a really great job!

I think it’s so cool that you are interested in diving. The underwater world is full of wonderful and sometimes scary things, and even fantastic career opportunities when you get to be an adult. There is a series of movies put out by the Discovery Channel called Seas of Life that your Mom or Dad could probably rent for you from your local Blockbuster – there’s really cool stuff in there, even stuff about sharks! I also have a bunch of movies in my collection that are less educational and a lot more drama – and I recommend those if you want to watch really cool movies about being underwater. There is, of course, Finding Nemo (my favorite Disney animation – it is so funny!), The Abyss, Leviathan, and Sphere. These are more like grown-up movies, and not always really accurate, but great stories and a lot of fun to watch. Ask your parents if those movies would be okay to watch, and then check them out! Also I love Titanic and recommend it if you haven’t ever seen it. There’s older movies, too, but those are my favorites! If you can’t go diving yet, then you’ve got to watch these movies!

You asked me in the card you sent me if I’ve ever seen a Great White shark. Well, I haven’t seen one underwater, thank goodness! I have seen them only on T.V. and in pictures, but I’ve seen a lot of different kinds of sharks like Black Tips, White Tips, Reef Sharks, Bull Sharks, Tiger Sharks, Nurse Sharks, and more. Only two of these are dangerous – do you know which ones they are?

Of course, all sharks can bite, just like all dogs can bite – but generally they don’t if you don’t mess with them. Which of the two above will bite even if you leave them alone?

Remember, though, that when you’re diving, the real danger isn’t the sharks – the real danger is in diving if it’s not done correctly. That’s why learning to dive the right way is so important. I hope that you’ll stick with your desire to dive as you get older.

I am sending you some things that I found on the bottom of the river. I think you’ll like them very much! You can keep them, if you promise to put them someplace where they’ll be safe. Remember if you drop them they will probably shatter, so be very careful with them! Two of them are shark’s teeth – the smaller one is in really good shape, but the bigger one came from a bigger shark. Both of the teeth came from a shark called a “Megalodon,” which we divers just call a “meg.” This kind of shark is now extinct, like the dinosaurs. These teeth are about 20 million years old – which is really, really, really, really old… About half as old as dinosaur bones. The smaller tooth would have come from a meg about 30 feet long, and the bigger one would have come from a meg about 45 or 50 feet long. That’s huge! The very biggest Great Whites are only about 24 feet long – a meg would have been twice that length! Do you know what the biggest shark in the world is today? I’ll give you a hint – they can’t eat people, and you can actually see two of them in the aquarium in Atlanta. They are not only the biggest sharks in the world, but are the biggest fish in the ocean (whales don’t count because they’re not fish – they’re mammals).

The other thing I’m sending you is the inner ear bone of a sperm whale, the food of a meg. These teeth and this ear bone were found in the same spot, so these teeth probably were lost by the meg when he was eating this whale. Scary, hunh?

I’m also sending you a write-up that I wrote once for a friend of mine who bought a very large and very nice meg tooth. He wanted to display the tooth in a special glass box on the wall, and wanted something to tell people all about a meg. You may have to have your Mom or Dad read it to you, but it’s really cool and tells you a lot about the teeth and what it’s like diving for these teeth.

I really enjoyed talking with you that evening about diving. If you come to Beaufort this summer, you can come over to my house – I have a new house with a pool, and I can maybe let you breathe on a tank underwater so that you can see what it’s like to dive. I have a mini-tank, too, so maybe we can set you up to try it. You’ll have to ask your Mom and Dad if that’s okay, even if only for a few minutes.

Keep thinking about diving, my friend. The ocean isn’t going to go away, and it will still be there when you’re an old man – so all you have to do to be able to dive is not stop thinking about it.

Your Dive Buddy,
Lew “SeaJay” Bayne
Deep South Divers