Spiderman Likes Shark

He runs a diving club.  He is here with its mainly younger members.  We are on the dive boat Meliss, pitching about on the green Mediterranean.  He is in his fifties, perhaps excessively confident, with a neat greying moustache, a smug wolfish look and a perfectly bald head. 

It is onto this compellingly shiny surface that Mr ADC, as the leader of the team of divers, had attached a comical clownfish diving hood.  It is here too that a small black spider is now ambling about, trying to gain some purchase or to find a way off.  Mr ADC is very pleased with himself, but it’s hard to take him too seriously, what with the spider.

Meliss is anchored just off a deserted cove south of Fethiye (glassy water, scrubby pines, stone goatherd’s hut).  We have scuba dived and swum, and now we are eating an excellent lunch prepared by a charming young girl who seems little older than my daughter.  I am delighted to have swum off my sea-sickness. 

I scan the sea and the land for life, but both seem deserted.  My binoculars have won me the nickname Mr Google among the crew.  High above the hillside dotted with pines and maquis, a lone long-legged buzzard tilts back and forth, wailing.

Mr ADC is telling me about his life while the spider circumnavigates his pate.  He is a computer engineer who used to make F15 fighter jets (single handed, by the sound of it). 

He is well travelled; he wants me to know this.

 “I like shark.  I go to Maldives, Seychelles, Philippines for shark.  Shark very friendly.”

Have you ever seen a shark here, in Turkey?

“I have been diving since 1978.  Three times shark – that is all.”  He shows me three fingers to illustrate.  I wonder how he feels about having to travel so far to get his sharks, and what has happened to the marine life here.

Have you seen changes in that time?

The thumb goes down.  “Bad changes.  Same everywhere.  Same in desert as in sea.”  By this I think he means: it’s alright, other habitats are devastated too.

How do you feel about this?

He shrugs complacently.  “We are animals.  Is okay.”

Spiderman is proud that his daughter is getting into diving.  He is lucky: my soon to be 13-year-old won’t see me, let alone dive with me.  He doesn’t seem to note the irony that his 14-year-old will be exploring depleted seas in which his beloved sharks are becoming harder and harder to find.  But it’s okay, because the planet is ours, and whatever we do is fine.  We can’t be held responsible.  We are animals.

He throws his bread roll to a shoal of small silver fish waiting at the surface, poking their heads slightly above the water.  He scrapes the remains of his fresh fish lunch into the refuse bin.

“I like shark” he repeats. 

The spider is still there.