It was one of those safe sharks

At Easter my sister, her husband and daughter were down visiting from Singapore. My niece (let’s call her Georgia) is a bit of a fish when it comes to the ocean and she had kindly agreed to help me improve my swimming technique.

Georgia is 16 years old and I know it’s weird that a teenager would want anything to do with an old aunt but she’s kind of neat that way.

Each day we’d have these hilarious sessions in the ocean. Things were hampered a little by the rather large surf but we were progressing in a manner that meant I wasn’t inhaling nearly as many krill as I was when we started.

One day her mother (we’ll call her Chrissie) ventured to the beach to watch us. She sat up by the dunes, some distance from the tide which was at the end of its ebb.

Georgia and I were splashing our way along the beach when I stopped for a breather and begged her to let us turn around because, quite frankly, I was knackered.

Georgia decided on the return trip that we would try a bit of breaststroke. She gave me some pointers and we set off, she like a dolphin, me like a sack of demented of cats. Through all the racket of my gasping for breath and spitting out water, I heard Georgia shouting “Erin, Erin, Erin” and my first thought was “is my stroke REALLY that bad” because, honestly, she sounded a bit fussed.

I stopped, stood up and Georgia said, in a really good trembly, almost Oscar-winning voice: “There’s a shark following us.” And you know, it really was just like the movies because there a few feet away was a shark … that was, you know, following us. We headed for shore. With haste.

If there are any swimming scouts out there I’ll give you my phone number because with the speed I attained I think I have qualified for the 50m freestyle splash-and-dash at London 2012. And if you put me in the pool with a shadowing shark, I’ll medal for you, New Zealand, that’s a promise.

But running is more my thing so I stood up and went for it. And that’s when I discovered that running in water with a shark close by is just like all those leaden-legged nightmares. I felt as if I was running in a gigantic pool of my mother’s custard (thick, lumpy and hard to get through).

Obviously we made it to shore because I’m telling you this story but here is where things turned a bit weird. Georgia’s MOTHER, my SISTER, the one we call CHRISSIE, was still sitting up by the dunes. She must have been about 100 metres from us. She enquired as to why we were leaving the water in such a hurry. Why were our eyes bugging out of our heads? Why were we wearing primitive fear grins? And was that our hearts she could see going lump-lump-lump in our chests?

We said the word “shark” a lot and here’s the kicker, here’s what Chrissie said … “I know,” she said, “I’ve watched it tracking you right along the beach.”

“And you didn’t TELL US!” we screamed.

No, she didn’t think to warn us because apparently it was just a basking shark. We weren’t in any danger, she said, because if it was going to attack us it would have swum at us very fast, and this one was just idly swimming alongside us. Presumably, the moment it turned to begin its “very fast” swim at us she was going to stand up and give us some sort of warning wave with her sarong. We may even have had a chance to notice the warning as the shark was taking us in half through the torso.

Isn’t my sister amazing? Such modesty! All these years she’s hidden from us the fact that not only is she a shark-identification expert, who can, at a good 100-metre distance, tell the difference between a basking shark and a hungry bronze whaler, but she’s a shark-behaviour expert, too. At that same distance she can also distinguish between a shark that’s about to attack and one that’s out for a lazy afternoon swim. Who knew?

The U.S. Bureau of Fisheries recommends shark … for eating!