This is the USS Mitscher, DDG-57. This is the ship I was on when I was in the Navy. I'm a plankowner, which means I was one of the original crewmembers of this ship. I was stationed on it when it was being built and when it was commissioned as a US Navy warship on December 10, 1994.
This picture was taken sometime in 1995, in St Croix, USVI. This was a fun trip because I had duty the very first day we pulled in. That meant I had the next four days off of work. Me and some friends pitched in and got a room and a rental car for the time we were there. We explored the beaches all day and the bars all night. We snorkled every beach we found.
On one windward beach the waves and wind were churning up sediments so the water was cloudy and we couldn't see far, maybe just five feet in any direction around us. I was swimming back to the beach when a bull shark suddenly appeared out of the muck, swam past me, and disappeared back into the muck. To flicks of it's tail and it was gone. The thing was probably six or seven feet long. I knew from my dive classes that sharks will first swim by to check things out, then come by again and nudge you on the second pass to see if you are edible, and then come in a third time for a chomp. I was in thigh-high water so I stood up and ran all the way back to the beach. Since I had on flippers I had to run backwards but standing up made me look like something other than food. I'll never forget how eerie it was seeing the shark appear and disappear like that. Not knowing where he had gone was worse than being able to watch him come in for the kill. I knew he was there, but where? Anticipation of death is worse than death itself...
