One night, I pull out my shark tooth collection from out of my drawer and observe each one of the teeth. I look at each one closely and try to picture the beast that it used to belong to. As I ponder the story behind each tooth, I am reminded of the time I went to Florida with my dad for a week. We did many cool things while on the trip. We went deep sea fishing, visited the Miami Dolphins stadium, and had some fun at the beach. My mom’s cousin Tim lives down in Florida, so we met up with him one day. He is a scuba diving instructor and he owns his own shaved ice stand. He goes out into the ocean quite often, and he is very experienced in the water. When we met him at a restaurant, he asked us if we would like to go snorkeling with him one day. I had been snorkeling before, but not like how he was talking about. I had just thrown on a mask and swam out as far as they’d let you go on the beach. But he told us that he had a dive flag, and since he had that we were allowed to go out as far into the ocean as we wanted. He said that we would go out a few hundred yards and swim around.
I asked him, “What’s the coolest thing that you’ve seen while snorkeling out where we will be?”
He answered, “Well, we see sharks out there sometimes.”

In a surprised voice I said, “Really? What do you do when that happens?”
“Well we just watch them. There’s not much you really can do,” he exclaimed.
That worried me. I was not sure how I would handle sharks and what they would do if they saw me. I didn’t want to seem like a wimp, so I just went along with it.
The next day, Tim, my dad, and I got to the beach, unpacked our stuff, and put our gear on. Once we were all prepared, we got into the water. Tim swam out in front and I let my dad and I followed close behind. It got kind of murky at one point so I lifted my head up out of the water to see where the dive flag was. It was just to the left of me, so I knew Tim was close. As we got out deeper and deeper into the water, I noticed that there were more and more fish. At one point, we were swimming along a school of about one hundred fish averaging two feet in length. They had many different colors and it was an amazing sight. Eventually, they turned around and we continued on. When we got to our destination, Tim told us to start swimming left and right instead of out, that way the current wouldn’t take us. My dad parted ways with us but I stuck with Tim because I was pretty nervous. The water was about fifteen feet deep, and there was a coral reef beneath us that had holes in it like cheese. One the edge of one section, I noticed the end of a tail, but what was strange was that it did not look like other fish tails. Immediately I thought “Shark!” but I wasn’t sure, so I stopped Tim. I pointed down at the tail and we lifted our heads up out of the water.
He nonchalantly said, “Yep, that’s a shark.”
Well that comforted me. I swam away as fast as I could while trying not to look like a frightened fish. Once we got some distance from the shark, I noticed my heart was beating faster and harder than someone who had just run a marathon. It felt like it was trying to leap right out of my chest. Then we kept swimming along and we saw some really cool things. We saw the famed clownfish and blue tang fish, made popular by the movie Finding Nemo. I also came across a puffer fish, but it was not puffed up, so it resembled a popped ball. At one point a school of very small fish started swimming all around my body. Each fish was smaller than my fingernail, and they were real skinny. They seemed to be having a fun time, but then all of a sudden they left. I looked over toward my dad and Tim to see what they were doing, and they were both just staring in the same direction. I swam a few yards over and saw nothing but the blue ocean. Once I reached them, I realized what had scared the smaller fish off. A giant blue fish, easily my size, maybe even a bit bigger was staring right into my eyes. I watched it sit there very still. Its blue color just barely differed from that of the ocean around it, which is why I hadn’t seen the large creature earlier. I had no sense of time while we stared at each other. It could have only lasted a few seconds. Maybe a few minutes. But, for no apparent reason, it darted off with lightning fast speed and disappeared. We saw a few more sharks along the way, each time though, we were only able to see a little bit of the tail or body. I tried to estimate the size of each one, but it’s difficult to guess when you only see a small section of it. Finally, we swam to this one part of the reef that had a large circular hole in it. When we swam just above it, we witnessed one of the most amazing sights that only nature has to offer. We saw top half of a shark. The beast was about eight or nine feet, and had an aggressive look. However, it just sat at the bottom of the ocean floor, breathing in and out. Its gills moved gracefully with each breath it took. It did not move, but I was still intimidated. The light sand around the dark figure moved with each breath. I wondered if it was going to do anything. Not that I wanted it to. But I was just amazed at how peaceful it looked. On tv, these creatures are portrayed as evil beasts that go around attacking people, but that is not what I saw. I saw a creature that was just doing what it was meant to do. We watched for several minutes this incredible sight, and we noticed that the shark was starting to move around more. Although I had gained a new respect for it, I still knew that I was vulnerable and in its habitat. After shifting around for a bit, it sat perfectly still. I wondered what was going on, and watched with curiosity. Eventually, it stopped moving completely. Just as I was about to ask Tim if we should go, a fish swam by. It was a few feet long and yellow. It swam along and went up to the shark, and as quickly as it came, it went. The shark inhaled the fish and swallowed it in one violent movement. You can probably guess what I did next. I decided to leave the area before that happened to me. Now as I stare at each one of these shark teeth, I decide that I’d rather not know what happened when it lost its tooth. Because I’m sure it involves a terrifying fish attack.