Fun and Phobias!

Having another school trip to the Abel Tasman National Park was too good to be true was it not?!

The very day my students and I kayaked our way through the sun-bathed sea, a scientist (who came and gave my Biology class a shark dissection last month!) was alerted to a Mako shark (annoyingly pronounced Marko here!) lolloping into an estuary not far from our kayaking destination. The half-ton shark soon died - cause unknown, and was hauled up onto the harbour to be gawped at by locals and passers-by. Scientists predict that it is 35 and pregnant - not sure if they met something as attractive in a back-water nightclub recently but that is soe intuition!

As a scientist myself, I'm proud of my lack of phobias. Spiders are picked up (even eaten at festivals... long story!), snakes stroked at the circus and ladders climbed in a suitably manly fashion (if that's possible!) But, like many, I am still haunted by Jaws, or the thought of ending up like several of the (poor) actors on the Californian coast... Each time I go swimming, kayakng, fishing or sailing in the sea (yes it is a hard life!) I think constantly of fins, teeth and (my) blood-shed... Logic (and several hardened Kiwi adventurers) tells me that large sharks are now rare (thanks to man) and that an encounter with one would be brief, uneventful, and fortunate. Hard to agree with eh?!

Anyways, one fewer of the feckers are in our seas. The beast is holed up in an industrial freezer until an important enough scientist is dug up and put in charge of telling the waiting masses if the thing was about to release killing machines from its loins, its age and cause of death (possibly its own offsring... I know!)

Upon returning to Nelson and hearing this wonderful news, I had a few days of normality before heading out to the Abel Tasman again. Fortune was with me and I was asked to tke a group into the park on foot. I did venture out on the water and guess what - saw a sea creature being bludgoned to death by a sea beast... these took the forms of a happy seal and an increasingly legless octopus!

Another fab few days was spent sliding down waterfalls, watching glow-worm caves and huge insects at night, incredible star-scapes and stunning coastline and most importantly, no sharks!

On the flip side, I am currently studying prudently for my PADI scuba qualification which my good chum Crispin will assess me for over Xmas and the New Year. We will be up in Whangarei... shark territory!