Jaws, Live

Monkey see. Monkey do. Monkey see people swimming with sharks? Monkey wants to figure out how to do that too!

"I could've stayed in the water with them forever."

"A lot of people watch [Shark Week on] the Discovery Channel or National Geographic shows and see these programs about sharks and then they call me and say 'I want to do that!' And I tell them 'Great! You can!'" says Patrick Douglas, CEO of Shark Diver, a company that takes adventure-seekers on shark-diving expeditions all
around the world.

"We err on the side of caution," Douglas says. "We're geared towards the everyman. You don't have to be an ex-Green Beret to come diving with us. You don't even have to be scuba-certified. We just want to introduce people to animals that they normally wouldn't see, and we want to help them do it safely."

In Alaska, he brings people to see salmon sharks, and in Mexico , divers see great whites. He also brings brave vacationers to Honduras, where a three-seat submarine takes people down 2,000 feet to see Hexanchus Griseus, prehistoric six-gill sharks.

"They look like monsters!" he says.

Other popular diving locations around the world include South Australia and the Bahamas.
Only problem is, once you get down deep with the beasts, you might not feel like coming back up-the thrill can be addictive.

"I could've stayed in the water with them forever," says Amy Smyrski, a California-based probation officer who took a dive with Douglas in Mexico last year. She couldn't stop smiling, she says. "And they always have their mouths open, so, it sounds weird, but I felt like they were smiling
at me, too."

Posted on January 23, 2006