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It
is about 11:30. After the first morning dive we are on the
deck of the Blue Star watching the dolphins. They are swimming
at 200-300 meters from the boat. "Can we borrow the Zodiac?"
I ask the captain. As usual, without a blink: "I take
you there". In thirty seconds we are on the floater:
Stefano and I with the cameras, Eric with the video, Nicolas
and the Parisian hands-free.
After two minutes we are snorkeling into the water. The dolphins
are at just 20 meters now. There are plenty of them. We hear
them whistling in all directions. We swim closer. I approach
one and catch him on my camera from 6-7 meters, too far for
a 24mm lens.
We are swimming in an area of no more than 20 meters of diameter.
Stefano is 5 meters far from me. I have the dolphins below
my feet, I point them to him. I
start looking around by turning at 360 degrees,  looking
down in the deep blue, in search of more dolphins.
Then I notice, deep down under me, three white spots. I
become suspicious; suddenly I focus the shape of a shark,
whose silhouette is barely visible in the water. I call the
captain; he is at a 100 meters on the Zodiac. At the same
time I see Stefano going underwater to get closer to the dolphins.
I see him speeding down, unaware of the shark. But the shark
didn't miss him! I see it coming up, with his cloud of little
fishes around the head, taking clearly direction towards Stefano.
I see Stefano swimming around, still unaware of the danger.
And here my nightmare begins... The shark is approaching him
at full speed, proceeding with astonishing simplicity, with
imperceptible tail movements, obliquely, with its head higher
than his tail.. I scream like a madman to alert Stefano, who
has still is head underwater. Obviously he can't hear me.
"Oh putain!" says Nicolas, who came nearer and watched
the scene with Eric. Adrenalin runs high. I swim towards Stefano,
I scream at the captain: "It is attacking! It is attacking!"
And then angst, pain suppressed in my throat as I had never
felt before. Now the shark is at 1.5 meters from Stefano's
legs, and he is still unaware of it. I stopped swimming, half-paralyzed
by what I was about to witness.
 I
worried about an attack from the back, the worst
kind. Instead, the shark made a left turn and showed
face-to-face to Stefano. I will never forget this scene: the
white belly of the shark, and Stefano's counter-reaction.
Luckily,
the
shark
did not
attack immediately.
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 Now
Stefano had seen him.
The adrenalin went down a little bit... The shark went back
about ten meters, and then came back charging. But Stefano was
waiting for him. He swung at him with his camera, which the
shark avoided changing direction to the left. He went away to
the same place as before, to come back again. Another approach
and another swing. This time the shark went to the right, towards
me. I saw him coming straight against me, at ten meters. I felt
the floater just behind me. I jumped out of the water and landed
on the opposite side from which I came up. Eric and Nicolas
were already there.
We rushed towards Stefano, who in the meantime had avoided the
third attack from the shark. Then he got up on the floater himself,
pulled up by Nicolas.And from above, we saw it again, with his
three white spots, swimming around two or three meters deep.
"You need to be fast if there is a shark." Incredibly,
the captain had spoken on his initiative for the first time
in a week. And I saw his face different from the one I was used
to see. By the time I first spotted the shark till we all found
ourselves on the floater no more than a minute must have passed.
But those moments when Stefano was swimming, his back to the
shark, who was coming nearer and he was so close to his legs-those
moments were eternal.
The angst, the iced blood, the impotence, the
incredulity, my heart beating in my mouth, in those 5 seconds
I felt a whole mix of emotions as never in my life, and thank
God it ended well!
Stefano looked the least worried. He did not have time to get
scared. "I even took a couple of pictures", he said
as soon as he got up, with a half-smile which did not hide the
preoccupation he experienced.
Back on the Blue Star, I saw Nicolas on the deck coming towards
me: "Il etait un Longimanus (Carcharhinus longimanus),
a dit Sophie! Drole, elle ne semblait pas surpise... elle a
dit que c'est arrivee plusiers fois!"
"Has it happened other times???" I think again of
Stefano, Eric and Corinna who in the morning had gone snorkeling
into the blue without the Zodiac, following the dolphins, at
400 meters from the boat, everyone on his own... She is really
a moron, I thought about Sophie. Then I see Stefano, from his
back, who is entering the cabin with his camera, as after every
dive: "Nice big teeth, this one is for the grand-children..."
Fabrizio Calcabrini
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