I plunged into the clear blue Turks and Caicos water. It was surprisingly warm, even though it was the middle of January. I waited for my guide and family. “Come on, the water’s great!” I yelled up to them. I adjusted my snorkel and mask before beginning my journey into the world of rainbow colors and astonishing beauty, propelled by my bright yellow flippers. Red coral, green coral, blue fish with black fins, pink fish with brown spots. You name it. It was there. After about fifty yards I stopped. I floated on my stomach, gazing in awe at the spectacular colors of coral and at the hundreds of unique types of fish. Gosh, this is nice. I began drifting off, caught in a daze. The brilliant colors of the fish and coral made it look as if they were fake, like something from a children’s picture book. It was amazing! A school of small yellow fish escorted me around the reef. I reached out with my hand to touch them, but they scattered like a spilled bag of marbles. I laughed and thought to myself, this rocks! I continued to swim until I caught up to my little brother. He was busy floating on his back while absently spitting water into the air. Haha, what a goof.

I was watching the unreal world under the sea when I saw a flash of silver out of the corner of my eye. I turned, expecting to see a barracuda, but no. It was worse. There, swimming about 30 feet from me, was a ten foot Nurse shark. It had a gleaming silver body, large white teeth, and a sleek muscular build. This animal struck fear into the hearts of all the other fish. This is incredible, I thought, until the massive predator pivoted and began to swim toward me. I was terrified but knew that I shouldn’t panic. It was within twenty feet of me before veering off to the left, swimming gracefully into deeper, darker waters. God, that was close. I wonder what would’ve happened if the shark hadn’t turned away from me. The fish resumed their movement and the reef went back to normal. At the time, I had been scared out of my wits, but seeing the fish calm again, I was able to relax. My little aquatic escort party of yellow fish rejoined me as I swam as fast as I could back to the guide and my family. When I caught up to them again and told them the story, there reactions were:

“Wow, that must’ve been awesome!” my dad exclaimed.

“Are you okay?” worried my mom.

“Can we go home?” asked my little brother, who was somehow bored.

We continued swimming around the reef. The guide pointed out all the interesting fish. On the way back, the guide pointed to a big dark shape in a coral alcove. We swam down to see what it was. I let out a muffled underwater scream–Baaaarrrrrrgggglllllll!!!–shooting a geyser of bubbles out of my mouth as I realized that we were ten feet from a sleeping shark, possibly the same one I had seen earlier. I swam back to the surface as fast as I could.

“Dad! Mom!” I screamed, as I searched the surface frantically for my parents. I spotted them about forty feet behind. My guide popped up next to me and swam to them alongside me.

“Time to leave,” my guide stated sadly once we had reached them. We swam back to the boat. I hadn’t realized how far we had gone. We began our long swim back the boat, hoping to avoid seeing any more surprises along the way.

As we approached the boat, something grabbed my leg. I thrashed in the water, thinking SHARK!!!! but as a turned and kicked out my free foot, I realized it was just my little brother.

“Ow!!!!!” he yelled angrily.

“Sorry,” I replied sheepishly. We then climbed up onto the thirty foot sailboat made of antique wood and thick cloth sails. I wished I could just climb into a big cozy bed and take a nap. I was completely exhausted. Our guide, who had arrived on the boat with my parents a few minutes earlier before us, greeted us with his smooth Aussie accent:

“Ahoy, mate! Did you enjoy feasting your eyes on that massive beast?” We all laughed and felt relieved to be safe. As we dried off, we looked at a book that had a pictures of all the fish in the Turks and Caicos reef, taking turns pointing out the ones we had seen.

”Hey, I saw that fish!”

“Yeah, me too!”

“Did you guys see that cool blue one?

“How ‘bout that yellow one?”

After that, we sailed toward the horizon, leaving a great experience behind us. Wow, what a magnificent time we had, I thought to myself as we sailed back to shore. I wished we could keep swimming because I didn’t want this experience to come to an end.

    “Mom and Dad,” I said,“thank you for this.”

    “Your welcome, Jacob!”