Should I Or Shouldn't I?

Okay, so I head to Hawaii in a week to conduct field work on Maui and along the Kailua-Kona coast of the Big Island. Regular readers may recall that on my last trip to Kona, I wrote about a special night dive offered by my good friends at Jack's Diving Locker called the Pelagic Magic Black Water Dive.

Just to refresh your memory, the dive goes like this: You head out at sunset into deep pelagic water off the Kona coast, suit-up, tether yourself to the boat on a weighted leash, and drop into inky black water to about 60 feet. That's it. Then, with tiny flashlight in hand, you simply drift through the black looking for amazing gelatinous zooplanktonic wonders to rise from the depths and pass by your mask. Sounds like a dream, but for the nagging feeling that I'm just glorified bait on a line for a hungry or curious Tiger shark, Oceanic Whitetip shark, or the uncommon (though not impossible) Great White encounter.

I know, I know... I'm more likely to get killed by a pig than a shark. But that's only if I'm hanging out on pig farms. I don't tend to do that. And I'm more likely to get struck by lightning. But only if I'm roaming about in the open during an electrical storm. Again, not something I tend to do. But if I go on the Black Water dive, I'd be bobbing about in open water at night--when big pelagic predators are most active. Isn't that raising my risk? Am I sensible to have some alarms going off? Or do I watch too much Shark Week?

I do a lot of finger pointing at folks who take stupid risks, then complain about horrible outcomes. I'd hate to have to include myself in that cohort. So in an effort to get a sense of what my readers think, I'm launching a poll. Check-it out in the upper left column below the About Me section. I leave in a week for Hawaii, so let me know what you think.