Shark Bait

Tara Zonderland spent the better half of her 20s in the middle of the Caribbean ocean feeding sharks. The small-town Canadian girl knew after her first lesson that scuba diving was for her.

"I had a real affinity for the water," Zonderland says. "It was an escape--an escape from home, and an escape from all the pressures of being a teenager."

Zonderland and her two younger sisters grew up on a farm with barn cats, dogs and horses in the small village of Grinrod. When she was 19, she took the diving instructor certification course and immediately got a job teaching snorkeling on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

After 1½ years of working seven day a week she wanted to live on land. A world-renowned dive company in the Bahamas, the Underwater Explorers Society (UNEXSO), hired her to work with about 30 other instructors and it was there that she learned how to feed four-to seven-foot Caribbean sharks. For the first three months, Zonderland worked as a safety diver who ensured sharks didn't get too close to customers on shark-feeding tours. She then asked her boss to apprentice her.

Positioning and timing are key for a good feeder, explains Zonderland, because sharks don't know the difference between your arm and the fish. Skilled feeders touch one end of a mackerel or herring to the shark's mouth, wait for the shark to sense the fish and then direct the creature in front of the tourists while it bites. Feeders have to think about safety as well as perform for the tourists.

Zonderland's first shark feeding went perfectly so she felt confident in her ability. "I think I was lucky because I grew up so removed from it all that I didn't have the preconceived notion of sharks. I just thought it was like another animal, like the horses I grew up with or the dogs."

Zonderland started feeding sharks three times a week. It wasn't dangerous, she says, but it was a lot of responsibility. As many as thirty tourists came on each dive and some had never been underwater before. She always had to be aware of the tourists and the sharks' behaviour.

Reef sharks won't attack unprovoked, but they can miscalculate the position of the fish when they're being fed. Feeders, therefore, wear 22-pound full-body chainmail suits similar to those of medieval knights. Although a person would still feel the pressure from a shark bite, the suit prevents the teeth from puncturing the skin. Feeders started wearing full-body chainmail after one of Zonderland's friends, wearing only a chainmail glove, had his forearm muscle ripped off. The biggest danger to the feeders is the risk of a shark getting its teeth caught in the links of the chainmail The sharks are powerful animals, and the force of their wrestling to get free from the chainmail can dislocate a feeder's shoulder or do other serious damage.

Despite the dangers, Zonderland loved her job.

"It was the most amazing experience in the sense that you are allowed to interact with these sharks in such a unique way. You would walk right by the tourists and sharks are brushing against them, hitting their knees."

Over time, the sharks became accustomed to the feeders, but they were never domesticated.

"They are such wild creatures. During mating season we'd have a hard time bringing them in because for one particular month, they weren't interested in eating, just sex. They'd come in with all the scratches and scrapes," Zonderland told me. "They don't have hands so when sharks mate they actually hang onto each other by biting one another."

When she was 21, Zonderland's boss retired. He chose her to train new instructors because she had a natural, caring way with sharks and she loved teaching. Some of the male feeders were more inclined to show off and battle the sharks, she says.

Zonderland worked at UNEXSO for two years full-time and returned for five summers while she studied history and geography at university in Canada. Ultimately, she decided she couldn't dive forever because it was physically hard on her body, and she became a teacher.

Throughout her diving career, Zonderland performed ten major rescues, all of which were successful. She describes them as defining moments in her life. A month ago, she moved to Germany to be with her boyfriend - nowhere near water. For the first time in her life she isn't packing her scuba equipment, another defining moment.

"It's probably one of the most frightening things, not being near water," Zonderland says.

This from a girl who swam with sharks for seven years.