I was not looking forward to being fully submersed in it. The sky was grey and my feet had already gone numb in the shallow water we had waded through. In winter temperatures can drop below 10 degrees Celsius. The idea of getting into this frigid world every day without a wetsuit was daunting. This is what I had been trying to work out since our last meeting. “Access what exactly?” I wondered silently. That’s the only way to access this,” he went on. That’s going to be your biggest challenge. We have evolved for thousands of years to go through these things, but because our lifestyles have changed, most of those experiences never happen. “A baby’s body is waiting for a whole range of things to happen to it. “When you are born, you are wild,” he explained. He watched me thoughtfully as we sat down on a rock looking out into a small, sheltered bay. Somehow, I couldn’t forget the little shark and finally, in early spring of 2016, I managed to arrange another dive with Craig. I was grateful for these opportunities, but had become increasingly frustrated that my relationship with nature was mostly limited to the stories I was telling about other people who had daily contact with the ocean. Over the next couple of years I travelled to amazing places and met some of the world’s most renowned marine scientists and conservationists. Dive after dive, I moved through the water anticipating another experience that would rekindle that moment with the shark pup, but the kelp forest had reverted into the same beautiful, but alien world I had known before. I went diving with friends and bought an expensive open-cell wetsuit. I emailed Craig to ask if I could join him again and was disappointed to receive no reply.
I thought about that day often over the next few months. It would be more than two years before I found answers. I left Craig’s house that afternoon feeling calm and alive, but with a headful of questions. I was conflicted about our contact with these wild creatures as a science journalist this new way of interacting with nature went against everything I believed, but these gentle exchanges gave me a deep sense of connection that I had not anticipated. I gently held a huge octopus as it suctioned onto my leg. We followed trails in the sand leading to almost invisible sea slugs. I watched Craig lift a sleeping catshark and cradle it at the surface. I knew this environment well, but on that day I felt like I had slipped into a new dimension – the mythical ‘Golden Forest’, as Craig calls it. We spent the rest of that morning diving without wetsuits in the cold waters of the kelp forest. Two months later, I found myself holding a week-old shark that had swum into my hands – a seminal moment for a shark journalist. At that time, I had a job as a journalist for a shark conservation and research organisation and I begged for a diving invitation.
In late 2014 a friend showed me images from his dives with Craig. More recently Craig gave up his career as an award-winning filmmaker to become a naturalist – a modern-day shaman of the ocean wilderness that laps at the shores of Cape Town’s urban jungle. He and his brother Damon, made waves in the documentary film world with The Great Dance, a film that gave viewers a glimpse of life and nature through the eyes of the San Bushmen.
I first heard of Craig when I was much younger. This was my first dive with Craig Foster. What possessed such a tiny, vulnerable animal to swim up the water column into the hands of a land-dwelling giant like me? I shouted to get the attention of my diving companions. Shysharks are benthic animals, generally sticking close to the ocean floor. I stood frozen as it swam towards me, then, without thinking, I spread my hands and submerged them in the water. I had been diving along this coastline for more than five years, but I had never seen a shark as small as this one. I was waist deep in 15 ̊C water when I saw it – a miniature creature swimming close to the surface with a beautiful serpentine pattern running down its back. In Issue 01 of Oceanographic, she shared the story of her initial experiences with Foster, prior to the creation of Academy Award-winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher. Meeting and diving with Craig Foster, the ‘octopus whisperer’ featured in Blue Planet II, set her on a path of reconnection and opened her eyes to things she never imagined possible. Like many urbanites, Pippa Ehrlich had lost her connection with the ocean.
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