The Longline
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If a shark is coming towards you, you know, just most of the time just staying calm and just maintaining eye contact is going to do the trick. It's when people start freaking out and flailing around is when they're like, oh, is that a prey? Why is the energy so high? Why is this thing looking like prey, right? I mean, I have a hard time getting sharks close to me most of the time because I'm like wanting them to get close.
This is Tanner Mansell. He's been diving with sharks for about 10 years. The first time was in 2016, on vacation in Jupiter, Florida.
We got out there, we jumped in the water, and it was just like these sharks were just swimming within five feet of us, just minding their own business, you know, looking at us, swimming around. But it was this overwhelming feeling of just calmness and peacefulness. You know, it was a high, a literal high that lasted months afterwards.
Tanner had been working a corporate job in Oregon. But after this vacation, he decided he wanted to make a change.
I couldn't go back to what I was doing knowing that that existed. So I just started reading books. I started putting everything I could together to be like, okay, how do I exit, you know, this lifestyle that I'm in and start over completely doing this?
By 2017, Tanner had saved up enough money to move to Florida. Eventually, he started helping out on tours with the same company he'd gone diving with, working with a man named John Moore. John and Tanner would take small groups about four miles offshore in the Gulf Stream. Then they put a cage with fish into the water to attract sharks. Jupiter, Florida, is known for its sharks. Depending on the season, they have bull sharks, hammerheads, and sometimes even great whites. By August 2020, Tanner had been working as a shark diving guide for about three years. On Monday, August 10th, they had a tour scheduled with six passengers, a couple, and a family of four. Here's John.
And we headed out to our normal bull shark spot and, uh, I kind of remember the water was a little bit murky, but we had great sharks that day. It kind of rained, so it was kind of a bit overcast. And the water just wasn't super clear. But I do remember we had really good shark activity. And we did probably about a 45-minute dive. And then we were headed back. And we still had extra time. It was right before our lunch break.
There was a nearby shipwreck that John and Tanner sometimes took tours to if they had extra time.
And so we cruised over to that wreck, but the water was really murky there. Like, I'd say, you know, almost no visibility, like maybe not the kind of water you'd really want to be in, just because, you know, it just becomes a little sketchier when the water's not clear. And so we were getting ready to go back in, and... And as we spun around, I could see this orange float, like an orange speck in a little bit further out. And so I was like, oh, God, you know, because sometimes if there's like a diver comes to the surface away from a boat, he'll inflate a little colored thing so that his boat can find him and other boats don't run him over.
You know, there's been... dozens of times where we've picked people up out in the water. And so when I saw this buoy, I was thinking to myself, oh, it's probably a scuba diver or trash. So we did our normal routine. If it's trash, we'll pick it up. If it's a diver, we'll help them out, get them back to their boat. And as we got closer, we realized, OK, it's just some random buoy.
And Tanner grabbed it, but he's like, oh, there's a fishing line on it.
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