In between the various events at the Art Deco festival, I had some spare time. So I decided to go swim with sharks in the National Aquarium. I checked out the pricing and it wasn’t too bad compared to just a walk-in visitor.
I was led up to the backroom where I donned a thick wetsuit, masks and fins. Then I was taken up to the top of the aquarium where the man told me to hop in! For some silly reason, I expected more than one customer and there would be a staff member accompanying. Just as well they didn’t tell me beforehand as I wouldn’t have done it all by myself.
I floated on the surface and slowly kicked to move myself around the aquarium. The instructions were to not use too much arm action and only gentle kicking. In fact, there’s not much point in moving around too much as the tank isn’t big like a swimming pool. The various types of sharks (big and small), the stingrays and myriad of other fish all go around below you. It’s pretty cool! Strangely I wasn’t scared!
There were a couple of times when the big sharks were swimming close to the surface … and close to me. Yep, that did raise the heart rate slightly. A scuba option is available for a little bit more money.
I won’t report on the Art Deco festival this time as I had written up about it a couple of years ago. You may read it here.
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- I accepted the challenge.
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- Sharks, rays, etc.
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- The big shark.
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- A big sting ray.
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- Another big shark that was in the tank with me (or vice versa).
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- Lovely creatures in the tank with me.
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- Me in the shark tank.
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- And that’s me behind the shark. I didn’t take these bad bad photos.
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- The big shark.