Junior, the White-Tip Reef Shark

Some years ago I signed up for a course to get my Scuba certification at a dive shop in Novato, in San Francisco’s North Bay. The course comprised one weekend in the classroom and swimming pool, and then the next in the open water, passing various skills tests. The classroom instructor was one Craig Gillespie, an easy-going avuncular mustachioed man about my age with whom I hit it off pretty well, so much so that when the young punks and geeks who made up the rest of the class took off for lunch and Craig and I found ourselves alone in the lunch room eating out of brown bags, he took the opportunity to tell me the following story.

Before coming to California he had worked for a similar outfit in Maui, which had a location on the south (tourist) side and another on the north. He was working at the north-side location when this story began, doing both classroom instruction and open water testing. One day he was out in the water with a group when he noticed a juvenile white-tip reef shark hiding in a crevasse in the coral. The poor thing had been injured, probably by a boat, and looked unlikely to survive. But Craig resolved to try to help: he took along some squid on his next dive and, finding the little shark still there and still alive, put the bait in front of it. The shark ate it immediately, and Craig was encouraged to pack along some food every dive, gratified to see the shark recovering from his injuries and growing. He named the shark Junior, and while it never grew as big as its apparent siblings nearby on the reef, it did pretty well, eventually coming out of its hiding place and hanging near Craig, even accompanying him as he did his underwater instruction. Junior never went near any other diver, but always appeared glad to see Craig, and became quite a local celebrity.

The day came when Craig was called to the other, south-side, location to teach, and he lost touch with Junior. He would periodically see someone from the north-side store and ask after his friend, and would be told that the shark was doing fine—he showed no interest in anyone, but had established his territory on the reef and looked fit and healthy. Craig eventually relegated Junior to the fond memory file.

Then one day someone called in sick at the north-side store and Craig was asked to come fill in. He took a class that was ready to test out into the water and arranged them in a semicircle facing him, each having mastered the required skill of maintaining buoyancy and hovering just above the sandy bottom. There he put them through the testing routine, giving hand signals to, say, let water into the mask and then “clear it,” blowing it back out with air from the nose, and all the other skills required for certification. But partway into the session Craig noticed that no-one was paying attention to his hand signals; in fact, they were all looking at a point past his right shoulder and their eyes were as wide as saucers. He turned his head to see what it was they were fixated on, and there was Junior, hovering by his right ear! Craig mentally kicked himself for not thinking to bring any squid, but Junior didn’t seem to mind—he just tagged along for the rest of the dive, apparently happy to be reunited with his human friend.

And that’s the story of Junior the white-tip reef shark, as Craig told it to me.