The Eel

I like the sea a lot. I believe it had a great influence on my life. As a child, I spent almost all my summer holidays in a small town called Cesme in Turkey. It's located near the Aegean Sea, which is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, located between the Greece and Turkey. One thing my younger brother and I liked most about these holidays was taking our mask and snorkel, and exploring the magnificent world beneath the sea.

A couple of days after my 17th birthday, it was one of those holidays again. One day, in one of our routine explorations of the coastline, we saw what we believed was the head of a moray eel under a long and shallow rock at the bottom of the sea. It was about 150 feet offshore and the depth was about 10 feet. Moray eels are known to have very strong jaws and razor sharp teeth. And at that time, there were a lot of urban legends about how they attack divers without even being provoked. Thinking about all these tales, I noticed that my heart was pounding like a drum. When I looked at my brother, I could sense the same emotions in him too. We made a quick eye contact and then swam away in a state of fear.

But the next day, I believe our curiosity overcame the fear and we decided to go back and show that fearsome creature to a friend of ours. So, the three of us went into the water cautiously like we were about to face the great white shark in the open ocean. Trying to hide the scary thoughts and breathing heavily through our snorkels, we found the same rock easily. And it was there again. With its long neck, sharp teeth, and confident stare, it had one of the most intimidating looks I've ever seen in my short life. It was about 4 feet long, had brown and gold skin with big black round spots. After circling with excitement for about 10 minutes, my brother opened the plastic bag that he carried with him and took out a small fish, which we had cut into pieces. Then he dived halfway to the bottom and released one of the pieces to the bottom near the rock. The eel slowly came out of its rock and grabbed the fish with its powerful jaws in the blink of an eye and went back under it. We were so amazed that it took us awhile to recognize that we were making strange noises of joy. Then, all of us fed the eel in turns until all the pieces were in its stomach.

The following days were a big excitement for us. After all, we were going close to one of most fierce and dangerous creatures in the sea, which attacks humans for no reason at all. We were told to believe that. And we were feeding this creature. We informed some more friends and even my father came with us a couple of times to watch. As the days progressed, the excitement subsided a little bit, but we were still feeding our new friend about 2-3 times a week. Over the time period, it had gotten used to us so much