Swimming with sharks, manta rays, and stingrays!

EL PASO, Texas ( KTSM ) – I’m not a strong swimmer. Growing up, I would splash around in the neighborhood public pool on Chelsea, but I didn’t have any formal swim lessons until my sophomore year at UTEP. My strongest stroke is the backstroke, and I like to swim underwater.

I was deathly afraid of getting into the ocean and preferred watching the waves from the beach under an umbrella. But after my cancer diagnosis, I became fearless of many things, including swimming pools and the ocean. Although I still like wearing a life vest or wrapping a noodle around my shoulders, now I have no fear of jumping in the water with my snorkeling gear and exploring what lives on the ocean floor.

Having taken trips to the British Virgin Islands, Honduras, Hawaii, Mexico, and most recently, Tahiti, I have seen beautiful coral, sand bars, and fish of all colors and sizes. I’ve seen barracuda, shrimp, lobster, and octopus. In French Polynesia, we swam with blacktip sharks, stingrays, and manta rays.

Blacktip sharks are not considered highly dangerous to humans, so I had no problem sharing the ocean with dozens of them. It’s sobering to lock eyes with a six-foot male shark protecting his female partner and baby. Underneath the sharks swirling around us were stingrays about four feet wide. Watching them flap their fins in a wavy and choreographed motion is mesmerizing as they fly through the water.

In another area of the vast South Pacific Ocean, we swam with manta rays. These gentle giants also glide through the water slowly, allowing us to admire their majestic features. The manta rays are diamond-shaped and have wing-like fins. They were black and blue with spots and about 20 feet wide. We swam with three mantas that had distinctive features. Manta means blanket in Spanish, and they have the largest brain-to-weight ratio of any fish. They are magnificent!

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