Also this issue:

Ultimate Summer Fun
Swimming with Sharks (and other summertime fantasies) Or: How to spend your summer vacation
-Debra Auspitz

Endless Summer
CP’s calendar of arts events will keep you busy for the next three months.
-Art by Robin Rice, Theater by David Anthony Fox and Dance by Denise Kasrel

The Noise of Summer
Circle the shows you want to go to.
-Jazz by Kyle Parker, Folk/World by Mary Armstrong, Rock/Pop by Patrick Rapa and Classical by Peter Burwasser

Make Way For Ducklings
The newest, oddest way to tour Philly.
-Debra Auspitz

Small Ball
A whole new meaning to fantasy baseball.
-Howard Altman

Painting Al Fresco
A summer crash course in watercolors.
-Lori Hill

Connecting Flight
A five-hour journey ends a century of separation.
-Frank Lewis

Salon Selective
Comfort hair, perfect tans and other lessons learned during a day of summer beauty.
-Debra Auspitz

June 12-18, 2003

cover story

Swim Fan

Get tanked: A dive at the New Jersey State Aquarium reveals some of the wonders of the sea. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

An underwater wonderland and fearsome creatures of the deep collide in a scuba-diving adventure at the aquarium.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

"Herrings are like M&M’s in a bowl, the sharks just eat them up," explains Sean Sanders, the affable New Jersey State Aquarium dive safety officer. In the acclimation tank next to the main ocean tank are 12,000 herrings waiting to replenish the population diminished by the ever-hungry sharks. "We often find the aftermath in the mornings," adds Sanders. One of the bulky sand tiger sharks has been swimming around with a large fish scale stuck in its teeth for the last few days.

I am scuba diving in the New Jersey State Aquarium ocean tank, one of the largest saltwater aquariums in North America. So why is this a dream-come-true rather than a nightmare from which I want to awake?

Ever since I was a child I've loved the ocean. It wasn't until I first visited an aquarium that I realized what wonderful creatures lay below the surface. The first scuba divers I saw swimming with them were even more impressive. "They're like mini-celebrities," says Sanders of the 82 dive volunteers who rotate shifts to conduct daily dive shows. These volunteers go through a stringent interview process and extensive medical tests and have to commit to a year of volunteering. The dive volunteers also scrub the tank windows, clean up the gravel and "slice and dice" capelin fish to be fed to the star animals.

A few years ago, I resolved to get scuba certified right before going to Hawaii for a vacation with friends. There, the waters were warm and tropical fish plentiful. Being underwater, 50 feet below the surface alone with the sound of my breathing, albeit through a regulator, was as close to tranquility as I've ever gotten. Somewhere around my 60th dive in the South Pacific, I ended up crying hysterically underwater as I watched our Fijian dive master, wearing no chain mail, hand feed swarms of gray-tipped reef sharks. Since then, I've been more fearful and nervous about diving, especially with sharks.

I wanted to get back to my original inspiration, when I was first overcome by a sense of calm while watching underwater creatures. What better way than to submerge myself in an aquarium tank?

Inside the 25-foot-deep ocean tank, I swim with sharks, turtles, stingrays, red and black drums, needlefish and a few "oyster crackers," which aren't even listed on any signs. Public visitors don't get to see this tiny brown-striped fish that snuggles up and camouflages itself behind a rock, snapping its wide, thick lips open and shut.

Everything is a little dark so the few visitors who start to trickle in look like ghostly shadows. "Look over here," I want to call out to them, embarrassingly hungry for the attention I gave to the divers when I first saw them. They keep their backs turned, engrossed in the information booth. No one notices me. Cara Ricci, from the aquarium's public relations department, is sweet enough to pop up in various windows and wave to me so I know what it feels like to have an audience. I wave back to my lone fan for the day.

We emerge from the tank after about 30 minutes in the 68-degree water. As I climb out onto the platform, Sanders asks me how I liked the dive and adds, "Where else can you see two different kinds of sharks, two different types of turtles and such a variety of fish in a single dive?"

He's right. Being so close to compare green sea turtles with lumbering loggerheads, mammoth sand tiger sharks with wily brown sharks, helps me recall my initial fascination with these sea creatures. My fear of scuba diving slowly recedes back into the deep.