The Algorithm Found Me in the Ocean

The Story of My Shark Encounter and Facing My #1 Fear

I’ve always been scared of swimming in the ocean. Lakes too. I don’t like when my head is above water and I can’t see what’s going on beneath the surface. Particularly when I can’t stand. The quiet lapping of the water above, while knowing my legs are dangling into a mysterious world of sea life below gives me an ominous unsettling feeling. Sharks are my #1 fear, but I also don’t like sea creatures in general. Jelly fish, electric eels, piranha, water snakes… they all sound terrifying.

You know who understands my greatest fear? Tiktok. I’ve been on shark and whale encounter tiktok for the last year or so. This means that every time I scroll my “For You” page, I get videos of the ocean, looking very calm and peaceful, and I know what’s coming. Sometimes it’s a guy floating on a kayak when a huge whale suddenly leaps out in front of him, sometimes it’s a drone shot of surfers having no idea there’s a shark swimming right next to them and sometimes it’s beach goers literally screaming and running out of the ocean because a shark suddenly infiltrated a shallow area. I watch them all on repeat, thinking I would LOSE MY SHIT.

Even though I have this fear, I don’t stay out of the water entirely. I’m fine on a boat or in a kayak or even a paddleboard. Actually one of my favorite life moments ever was paddleboarding in Lanai at sunrise when hundreds of dolphins swam into the cove and started jumping alongside our boards. It was an amazing moment that I got to experience without my legs ever going into the water. With the exception of scuba diving (I would never), I’m also usually game if we are doing a fun water activity, like rafting on the back of a boat or even a cliff jump. The joy of having a new experience trumps my fear of what lurks in the water. I just get out as quickly as possible once the experience is over.

Which brings me to my recent trip to the Cayman Islands. Leah (my creative assistant) has a family friend who owns a condo on 7 Mile Beach and invited Cara (my manager) and I to stay with her. We called a “Mommy Shorts Work Retreat.” Cara arranged for us to go to Stingray City, a sandbar in the middle of the ocean where people swim with stingrays, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area. My first reaction, was nope, not going. But then my mom said it was a “must do” and I thought, this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity and I should just take it. FOR THE PHOTOS.

Stingray City was great. Since we had experts in the water with us and the water was so clear that we could see the bottom (it was also shallow enough so we could stand), I trusted the environment and wasn’t scared. I think knowing what we were there to see made the experience easier for me. I held the sting rays, gave them kisses for 7 years of good luck and got back on the boat, feeling very proud of myself.

Then the boat took us to our next stop— a reef where we could go snorkeling. I’ve been snorkeling two times before. Once I kind of enjoyed it because the sea life was so far below us that I didn’t feel like I was actually part of it. Another time, I got totally freaked out because the guide called us over to check out some barracuda and I noped myself right back to the boat. This time, we were in fairly shallow water and there were lots of other boats pulled up in the area with snorkelers. The water was so blue and clear that it looked inviting. While everyone was putting on their masks and flippers, I asked the guide what we might see and he handed me some reference cards with pictures of all the different fish in the area so we could identify them. They all seemed harmless enough.

“You know sharks are my #1 fear, right?” I said to Leah and Cara at least five times before we went in the water. Leah, who had been to Cayman many times before, assured me that in all these years she had never heard of anyone having a shark experience. “There are no sharks in Cayman,” I believe were her exact words.

So we went in. I did not love it. I was struggling to keep water out of my mask and kept feeling like I was inhaling water through the snorkel. My life jacket was riding up and felt like it was strangling me. I kept questioning whether I had put on everything correctly. Leah and Cara seemed to be having a great time though, checking out the reef, yelling to come see a rainbow colored fish or a purple sea fan. I finally started getting the hang of it, but then felt like my legs were getting too close to the coral and freaked out a bit, so I swam a few feet away from the edge of the reef.

That’s when I noticed a huge amount of fish coming toward me. Which was weird because a few minutes prior, that part of the ocean was pretty clear. They were all swimming fast and somewhat haphazardly, as if someone had just dumped a huge bag of fish into the ocean. And then I saw it. One huge gray fish about 10 feet away from me amongst all the little ones. About the size of an adult human. At first, I couldn’t quite process it. I did a quick mental checklist. Big fin. Check. Little white lines down the side. Check. It was a fucking shark. And just to be clear, the water was not that deep, so this shark was not below me, it was on the same plane as me. The only thing that saved me from complete and total panic was that it was swimming past me, not toward me. So my view was of the side and not the front.

I stuck my head up above the water and immediately saw Leah do the same. She was about 20 feet away from me and the shark had swam right between us. I knew she had seen it too. I motioned back to the boat and she nodded her head vigorously. Then I swam like my life depended on it, which I found out later, is exactly the wrong thing to do. When I got back to the boat, I had to take my flippers off in the water in order to walk up the ladder. I can’t even explain the amount of panic I felt as I pulled those things off. Then this girl behind me yells, “Help me!” I look back and she is hanging on this rope, half in the water. I reach out and pull her to the ladder like I am saving her life in slow motion, heroic music playing in mind. Later I found out, she didn’t even know about the shark, she just wanted to get out of the water.

One of the guides on the boat put out his hand and helped me up the ladder. He said, '“You are okay. It’s not going to hurt you.” I said, “But you saw it right???” And he confirmed, “Yes.” Just to be sure, I said, “It was a shark, right?” And he said, “Yes. I’ve never seen someone swim so fast back to the boat in my life.”

Leah came up the ladder right behind me and then Cara after her. Cara was like, “What’s going on, guys? Why did you book it out of the water?” We told her about the shark. Cara processed. “So, what you’re saying is, you guys saw a shark and booked it back to the boat without telling me?”

“Ummmm, yes, that’s what we are saying.”

To be fair, we had no idea where Cara was in the water at that moment. We were all doing our own thing across quite a large swath of ocean. I just happened to look up and see Leah, otherwise it was every woman for herself!

And also, seeing the shark appeared to be not that big of a deal to everyone else around us. No one else in the water was notified about the shark. There was no mass panic of everyone fleeing the sea. We just sat on the boat and watched as all the people on our tour (and the other tours around us) continued to snorkel, blissfully unaware.

I asked the guide if it was normal to see a shark on one of these tours. He said, “No, I have never seen one before, but it is the ocean.” We asked if it was any particular kind of shark and he said it was probably “just a reef shark.” We looked up reef shark. You know what it looks like? A fucking shark.

The the guide said that he wished he had been in the water when it swam past. We heard another girl say that she had seen the shark and tried to show her dad. He was sad he missed it. I texted Mike about what happened. He said, “That’s awesome.”

So, here are my main takeaways from facing my biggest fear:

1. Thank god Leah saw the shark too or else she never would have believed me. If you are going to have a shark encounter, you better hope there is someone who can corroborate your story.

2. You know how you think your phone and Alexa are listening to you because things you see online are too coincidental? Welp, I’m sorry to report that the universe is in on the algorithm too. “Oh! We know what kind of content Ilana engages with! You know what would be fun? Let’s serve her up some sharks in real life!”

3. It can’t be that much of a coincidence that me, a shark fearing person, sees a shark immediately after I dare to go in the ocean. It makes more sense that sharks are everywhere and swimming amongst people all the time, they just don’t realize it.

4. Sharks are probably not all out to get us, despite what Jaws told us as kids.

5. If you want to go snorkeling (or scuba diving), you should be one of those people who thinks seeing a shark is awesome.

6. I am clearly not one of those people, so I will never be going snorkeling again.

7. If you want to know what you should do in case of a shark encounter, just ask Harlow. I had a camp call with her later that day and told her what happened. She said, “Did you stand up and stay still?” I said, “No, I swam for my life in the opposite direction. Why? Was that wrong? Because I was pretty proud of my speed…” She said that sharks have pretty bad eyesight, so if you don’t move, they might not see you. If they do see you, you want to make yourself seem like the predator. So, quickly swimming away can alert them to your existence and also make you look like food. Oops.

I’m not going to lie, after we got back to shore, I was still pretty shaken up about the experience. We would be doing something else and I’d just flashback to the shark moment and be like, “CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED??” But as the hours passed, the fear turned into incredulousness and then laughter at the ridiculousness of it all and now I’m just happy to have a good story to tell.

I thought Leah and I would have many stories to tell from our time working together. But forever bonded by a shark encounter was not one of them.