Sharks and Fight, Flight or What?
I got back from Costa Rica yesterday, and basically, Costa Rica is paradise. There is so much lushness and life. One day my sister and I were scuba diving at the bottom of the ocean, and the next day we were in a cloud forest, a special rain forest with a unique ecology since it is formed at the level of clouds. That is just how amazing it was.
The highlight of the whole trip was the scuba diving. My sister was very afraid of seeing sharks, but after some persistance I convinced her to go, me knowing rationally that most sharks are not man-eaters and it is precious to see them given that they are becoming endangered species.
Our guide, who was a tall, slim, tanned, and cute Columbian spent most of the day flirting with us. He dubbed us "his beautiful girls" which was somehow very touching. We followed him under water, while he helped us with our gages and made sure that we were okay and didn’t get lost.
So – we were under water milling around in wonder, swimming with schools of fish, carefully examining the ocean floor for interesting finds and suddenly, we saw the shark. Even though I knew they wouldn’t hurt us… I was paralyzed by fear, and I suddenly could not breathe properly. At this point, the dominant model for human response to stress would predict either fight (which is not realistic in this case) or flight (which would not be possible, given my inexperience with the equipment). So… what happened? Neither.
After freezing for a while, I quickly swam up to the cute Columbian guide and held his hand tight… and I would not let go for a few minutes. After I got home I did some research on the Fight or Flight response, and found that there is actually another way of coping with stress which is Tend and Befriend. According to this theory, humans have a tendency to come together in difficult times, and helps them deal with stress by joining together as a group. So, the guide was temporarily irresistible, but a few minutes later… when I tried to let go and he kept holding on, somehow my tend and befriend impulse was already gone 
. My sister, who was officially afraid of sharks, was totally cool and had no stress response whatsoever.
On top of the sharks, we saw three seahorses,
some clown shrimp and a sea turtle. We could not believe the luck. We
were with some very experienced American divers that day, who had been
on hundreds of dives and had never seen those animals. So – I learned a lot about creatures while I was under the ocean in Costa Rica.
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