The True Tale of the Sapa fish


I saw the nurse shark. It was laying flat on the sandy bottom beneath a huge coral head. I had been snorkeling calmly back to the fiberglass lancha on the other side of the island. Before that very moment I had been placidly swimming along, noting the different fish, corals and sea cucumbers. I was travelling along the very same route I had taken going out for the first time, so I was pretty much seeing the same stuff I had already seen.

Upon seeing the nurse shark I first though that maybe it was just a really big eel, but wait, eels are definitely not that color and uh, I am pretty sure they do not have fins, Shit it's a friggin' nurse shark! All these thoughts progressed through my brain at a rapid fire pace, bam bam BAM get out of there! I quickly turned around and swam panickly, unevenly, spastically out of there and straight to Ace who was also a little panicked when I ran into him because he had seen a big fish as well (although if this were poker I am sure that my nurse shark would beat his big silver fish, if it were a hand anyway).

I told him agitatedly that I had seen a nurse shark and that it was probably a baby but it was still big and it's a SHARK and that in no way in hell was I swimming anywhere near that area and there was no way I was going to swim all the way out to sea just to avoid the nurse shark because it's the open sea! There are more sharks out there and I am not going snorkeling in water that I can't even see the bottom in.

So we hollered at the launch guy and he came to pick us up in the launch and as I clambered up into the boat I scratched my shin and it instantly started bleeding and yet I couldn't stop from going on and on about how I had SEEN A SHARK! And that is when the launch guy said, "Ah, but they don't do no harm; he just be a sapa. They no harm you unless you grab it's tail. He just waiting for lobsters or crabs to come by." and I laughed nervously, but I saw it. Sapa or no sapa.

That didn't stop me from snorkeling the next day and almost swimming straight into three jellyfish.